The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The Drops of God

Shizuku Kanzaki works for a Japanese beer company and is the son of legendary wine critic Yutaka Kanzaki. Ironically, Shizuku loathes wine out of spite for his father's obsession and his childhood experiences of doing absurd things to refine his senses for wine. One day, Shizuku receives word that his father has passed away and is summoned to the family home to hear his father's will. At the hearing, a wine critic named Issei Tomine appears, claiming to be Yutaka's recently adopted son and to be in line to inherit Yutaka's estate, wealth, and esteemed wine collection. To determine who would receive the inheritance, the late Yutaka held a competition for the two: to identify and describe 13 different wines he had laid out, known as the 12 Apostles and the "Drops of God". Much to Shizuku's chagrin, he accepts the terms in order to make sure Tomine doesn't claim his father's fortune, only to become enticed by the world of wine along the way.

The Drops of God is based on the manga series by writer Tadashi Agi and artist Shū Okimoto. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

It's not at all surprising that a subculture as robust and long-lasting as wine appreciation would inspire a globally successful manga, The Drops of God, and that said manga would eventually inspire an anime. Having heard about the Drops of God manga previously, I knew going into this anime the lengths this series goes in exploring the world of wine and knew to expect some top-tier anime melodrama. However, even if this first episode is unique enough to make an impression, it's wildly underwhelming and frustrating to watch.

While I'm more than bought into the central premise of watching two adoptive brothers compete in a wine identification contest to earn their recently deceased father's fortune, the execution is sorely lacking. The lead, Shizuku Kanzaki, is comically ignorant of wine to the point where he doesn't know what a commonplace term like “vintage” means, and yet can perfectly decant wine and expertly describe compounding flavors subconsciously, thanks to wine tasting training he received from his father. Kanzaki being hyper competent at this very niche skill without realizing it makes this character feel super uncanny, and it's difficult for me to connect with him, let alone root for him, in this first episode.

It also doesn't help that much of the animation and direction in this first episode is fairly rough and stilted. Characters often move and are positioned awkwardly, and their expressions change their face shape so wildly that they nearly look like different characters from scene to scene. This premiere also jumps around temporally quite a bit to add dramatic tension, when the narrative would have been perfectly engaging and easier to follow if it were told linearly. This episode also ends on a cliffhanger where Kanzaki has to replace a rare vintage that he and apprentice sommelier Miyabi Shinohara broke while doing research, and I would have rather gotten any kind of resolution on previously established plot points before this new one was introduced.

All that being said, there is promise here, and I appreciate the watercolor collages and musical cues used to represent the flavor a given wine evokes. There's potential here, but the rougher parts of The Drops of God need to get sanded down fast for its stronger elements to really shine.

There's an old saying that “there are no new stories, just new writers.” What this means is that while the details like characters and individual plot points may be different, story structures are something used again and again.

In the case of Drops of God, despite being based around wine, the story structure being used is one commonly seen in sports anime. On one side, we have Shizuku, the talented newbie. He's totally ignorant of the world of wine, yet was unknowingly trained by his father to be a genius sommelier. Then, on the other side, we have Issei—the passionate, hardworking, and experienced rival.

The two find themselves pitted against each other in a tournament. Each “game” requires them to identify one of the “Twelve Apostle Wines” before fighting it out in the “championship” by finding the greatest wine of all: the titular “Drops of God.” In between each match, we get mini-adventures as the two train and have experiences that prove relevant to the ongoing tournament.

Of course, the sports framework is just that—a pattern by which the story is told. The story itself is about a father using his own death as a way to do what he couldn't do in life: connect with his son. By setting up the challenge with a worthy rival and millions in inheritance on the line, Shizuku's father is attempting to form a bond between the two great loves of his life, his family and wine.

And beyond that, this show is all about sharing the wonders of wine with the viewer—especially those ignorant of the hobby. It does a great job of making the world of wine interesting by showing as much as telling—using psychedelic or surreal visuals to convey aspects of the wine from ingredients and age to memories and abstract feelings. If there is one glaring issue with the show, it is that the animation is often stiff with character movement, especially kept to a minimum.

In the end, this is a show that lives or dies based on whether you find the world of wine interesting or not, or if you're interested enough in the sports-like contest to want to see more. As for me, it didn't quite capture my interest, but I can see why it is popular enough that it's had two live-action adaptations in addition to this anime.

I like a good glass of wine to go with dinner, and I can appreciate the indulgent and hyperspecific instincts that drive any alcohol connoisseur, since they're essentially the same exact emotions that drive me to obsess over my Gunpla model kits and classic video-game franchises. That said, it is very difficult to get through the first minute or so of Drops of God's premiere without wondering if the show taking itself so insanely seriously isn't meant to be some kind of joke. The operatic vocals on the soundtrack, the overdramatic narration, the utter deadpan nature of it all…can we all admit that it's a little funny? Like, when Shizaku takes a sip of wine and experiences a divine vision of 70s-prog rock for a few seconds to try and visualize what he's tasting, we're supposed to be giggling like mad, right? I sure hope so.

To be fair to Drops of God, once you recalibrate your brain to operate on its very melodramatic frequencies, it becomes easier to see what the show is getting at. With all of the jargon and impressionistic wine-tasting visuals on display from the very get-go, it is clear that this is one of those hobbyist anime that is really trying to sell folks on the experience. To a degree, I have to imagine that Shizuku Kanzaki's theatrical display of decanting is capturing at least some of what the obsessed oenophiles are experiencing every time they uncork a bottle of a twenty-year-old merlot and sniff those precious notes of tannin and tobacco. I'd probably enjoy myself too if I were sipping on that glass instead of watching it being drunk by some imaginary cartoon guy through my computer screen.

So, yes, the show is at least taking its niche interests seriously - perhaps a bit too seriously - but the real question is if the drama that supports all of this sniftering will be enough to win over the folks that aren't just here to take notes for an upcoming wine-tasting that they want to show off at. So far as this premiere is concerned, I won't say that there isn't potential, but I'm far from convinced. The Dead Daddy Drama that Shizuku is going through has been done a thousand times before, so Drops of God is going to have to work extra hard to craft a version of that old tale that is worth telling. Let's just say that it is hard to feel confident that Drops of God is going to pull it off when we get scenes like Shizuku dramatically dumping a bottle of hilariously fake-looking CGI wine down the drain while weeping over how Papa loved fermented grape juice more than his own flesh-and-blood.

Drops of God doesn't look terrible (aside from that awful CG), but its bold linework and overwrought direction seem to be masking an underlying cheapness in the animation that undermines whatever dramatic potential this premiere might have had. Sloppy character models, stiff pacing, and a generally lethargic atmosphere all combine to give this production the air of a show that is little more than a colorized version of manga panels with some lip-flaps added for good measure. Maybe checking out the original manga would make me more inclined to fall in love with this material, but the anime version of Drops of God seems like the kind of drink that won't regret having to spit back out into a bucket after swishing it around in your mouth for a while.

Every so often, an extremely popular manga that I never read gets an anime adaptation, and the first episode leaves me thinking, “All that fuss over this?” It doesn't happen every season, but there have been three so far this round: Rooster Fighter, Liar Game, and now Drops of God. This is the international superhit? On top of that, this is all the effort that got put into the international superhit manga?

Maybe it's because I'm not a wine person. I'll drink a glass here and there, usually whatever's leftover from cooking dinner, but I'm not out touring wineries or perusing the wine list when I go out for a nice meal. I'm all too aware of the studies that have shown that putting a fancy label and high price tag on a bottle of wine has more to do with how much people enjoy it than the taste. (However, I suspect a wine person may take issue with the doofy way characters in this show hold the wine glass by the base, rather than by the stem.)

So when The Drops of God started doing Yakitate!! Japan-style reactions for enjoying wine, it felt more than a touch goofy to me. It's the kind of thing that fits right in with a silly shonen title, but this is supposedly a grown-up series for grown-ups who are old enough to enjoy a glass of wine. Same for the Psych-style training Shizuku's father put him through as a child to train his olfactory sense: it makes sense in a series that's intended to be goofy popcorn entertainment, but is tough to swallow for something that styles itself as high-class and mature. The characters have jobs, drink wine, and have sex! But also, they're locked into a high-stakes competition determined by who is better at smelling and tasting! It is, essentially, a shonen battle series wearing its dad's suit.

And you'd think that for such a huge hit, they'd make it look not quite so… bad. This isn't a full-on disaster of a production, but it's not nearly as glossy as one would expect for something so high profile. It's just kind of stiff and brownish, with CG wine that meshes poorly with the rest of the animation.

But hey, I'm not a wine person.