The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The Ramparts of Ice

Koyuki Hikawa is an aloof high school student who struggles to get close to others and builds a wall between herself and others. Although she spends her time alone at school, for some reason, Minato Amemiya keeps getting closer to her. The frustrating story of youth follows the lives of four somewhat complicated individuals: Koyuki and Minato, plus the popular girl Miki and the laid-back boy Yōta.

The Ramparts of Ice is based on the manga series by Agasawa Tea. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Thursdays.

After spending a whole quarter with the good kids of You and I Are Polar Opposites, it's hard not to strike some parallels between them and the cast of The Ramparts of Ice. For those who watched the best high school ensemble romance of the season, it feels a bit like a drama from the point of view of a mix between Azuma and a gender-swapped Taira. While it's not a perfect comparison, this should be enough to give you an idea of what kind of protagonist Koyuki is.

If you, for some reason I cannot fathom, did not watch You and I Are Polar Opposites, I'll explain it in a little more detail. Introverted Koyuki was teased by her classmates in middle school; while it seemed to have started off as mostly good-natured, she definitely didn't have the kind of trust in them that makes that kind of jocular antagonism okay. The episode starts mostly with point-of-view shots of her classmates grinning at her and making cracks about her height. We understand her perspective instantly: this is demeaning, and nobody has thought to check if she's okay with it.

We already know about Asagawa Tea's skill for writing likable characters from the show's immediate predecessor, but Koyuki is as different a protagonist from Suzuki as you can get. While Suzuki is bubbly, well-liked by her peers, and a compulsive people-pleaser, Koyuki pushes people away with her intense case of resting bitch face. Still, Tea and the anime team do an excellent job gradually revealing the different directions the teasing from her classmates took. The rest of the ensemble, her best friend Miki and two sweet-natured boys in another class, offer hints toward their own complexity, and I'm interested in getting to know them better.

This project is an interesting choice for Studio KAI, following up last season's sakuga-fest Sentenced to Be a Hero. The animation here is, of course, more subdued, but puts in the care needed to pull off making the characters the expressiveness they need for the story. It has some cool stylistic flourishes as well, like the visualization of the titular ramparts of ice going up around Koyuki.

You and I Are Polar Opposites is on break until summer, but The Ramparts of Ice will fill the gap nicely.

One thing about being bullied or even just being generally disliked by your peers when young is how it sticks with you. It becomes a part of who you are—part of how you view yourself. “I am the one people don't like.” This becomes the foundation of a wall to protect your feelings. You tell yourself, “I don't want to be with those people anyway. Being alone or in the company of a true friend is far better.” And so the ramparts grow. Even when those walls are no longer needed—when no one thinks poorly of you or is out to get you in any way—they remain.

Needless to say, this anime hits me on a deeply personal level. By the time I hit high school, like Koyuki, I was used to seeing myself as a social outsider. Oh sure, I built a solid friend group over the years with likeminded people but just assumed that everyone outside that group generally disliked me. But looking back now, I can see that my classmates were generally amiable towards me—if they thought about me at all—and the only person who straight up didn't like me made that clear at the time and we simply avoided each other.

Koyuki has spent the majority of her first year of high school in a similar state. Her isolation is bolstered by the fact that she is both incredibly attractive and has a serious case of “RBF”—which makes her look perpetually angry when having her usual neutral expression. Her classmates don't hate her; they fear her. They see her as above them and completely unapproachable.

Of course, there are always those social butterflies who don't care about little things like that and have no issue approaching anyone. Minato and Yota fall squarely into this group and have a chance of breaking through the wall around her. However, Koyuki has many triggers that remind her of her trauma—and these are landmines her new potential friends will no doubt step on. We'll just have to see if they are able to get her to see that life is not the same as in middle school over the rest of the series.

Middle school is hell. At least, it was for both me and Koyuki, who appears to have spent her middle school years being bullied and “teased,” which, as she notes, is just a cute way to frame bullying. It doesn't count if they say it jokily, right? The reason for her torment seems to have been two-fold: she stood out as the short, quiet girl and her friendship with a desirable boy triggered a popular girl. It's hard to blame Koyuki for building the eponymous ramparts of ice around herself. Letting people in didn't exactly work out for her.

There's a lot this episode gets right about being in her position. The opening scenes, where we just see through her eyes as she looks at the ground or tries to shrink away from other people, are visceral. I think I knew the floors of my middle and high schools better than the walls, because it was so much safer to just look down, where you couldn't make accidental eye contact with a perky boy or incite someone into talking at you. Then, as time goes on, you learn to perfect your Ice Queen act. Koyuki's trajectory is so familiar, her coping mechanisms basically industry standard for bullied kids trying to avoid human contact.

Even better is the fact that she's not totally friendless. Miki (or “Mickey” as the dub says a few times) isn't who anyone would assume would be Koyuki's friend, but the two girls are clearly close. They don't advertise it at school, but that feels more like a product of them being in different classes than of Koyuki trying to avoid Miki. And Koyuki isn't totally averse to being friends with others, as we see with Minato and Yota; she just doesn't trust other people easily – especially not boys, and based on both the flashbacks and the post-credits scene, it's not hard to see why. I can't tell you how threatening that kind of attention can feel if you don't want it.

This level of relatability can make this hard to watch. There were definitely a few times where I was uncomfortably reminded of days I'd rather forget. But I also think that stands to be a strength of this series – Koyuki's not the only one with baggage (surely Yota has a reason for not wearing his contacts or glasses), and I do want to see where this goes. Koyuki doesn't need to melt her ice – but she might decide she's willing to cut a door in the wall.