The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

BLACK TORCH

Jiro Azuma is descended from a long line of shinobi, and he can also talk to animals. Although he may appear rough and tumble, his compassionate side emerges when it comes to furry critters. But Jiro's soft spot for animals gets him in major trouble when a suspicious stray cat fuses with him, granting him exceptional power but also dragging him into humanity's hidden battle against powerful, menacing spirits.

BLACK TORCH is based on the manga series by Tsuyoshi Takaki. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Black Torch has a lot going on. Jiro is a delinquent punk who is also a ninja who can also talk to animals, who gets embroiled in a conflict between mononoke and humans. It was also cancelled eight years ago after only five volumes, which leads me to wonder just why it's getting an anime adaptation now, of all times. Perhaps it's because the episode's conclusion resembles Chainsaw Man's inciting incident.

To its credit, all these elements blend together into some fun, goofy shonen action. Outside of some clunky exposition on the part of Jiro's grandfather—who pops up to yell about their lineage and the family sword and subsequently disappears for the rest of the episode—each plot element is well-seeded enough that nothing ever felt out of nowhere. It's one of the more charming cases of so much happening, with a new twist waiting around every corner. Jiro takes each development in stride, too, but I guess when you're a shinobi with the power to talk to animals, there's not much left to shock you.

Did the other kids really make fun of him for being able to talk to animals? I've never met a child who wouldn't be thrilled by that ability. He'd be the most popular kid in any school I've ever worked at. Still, it leads to some touching moments, especially when he's talking about his old dog, Nachi, adding a new layer to the classic idea of a lonely kid turning to their pet for comfort.

But, as much as I appreciate the plotting and the action, I have to admit that I'm reasonably sure Black Torch just isn't for me. The camera practically salivates over the sole human female character's body, ogling her ass in skintight short-shorts and the "absolute territory" thighs beneath it. The soundtrack, while appropriate for the show's tone, is ear-splitting nu-metal. It's just so teenage boy edgy and, this may come as a shock to you: I, Caitlin Moore, am not a teenage boy.

Next week: I really hope the Junichi Suwabe character starts beefing with this child. Again.

If I were to watch more BLACK TORCH, it would be for the sole purpose of seeing if Ichika ever gets to be a full character. As things are, she's more of a fan service vehicle than anything else. Two episodes in a row, she's been introduced ass-first, given just enough dialogue between leering shots to give some semblance of a personality, then leaves. If I were a gambling woman, I would guess that she's set up as Jiro's much more powerful senpai, only to be sidelined the moment things get serious. Maybe she'll get a designated female opponent. Maybe.

It may be cynical, but I've watched and read enough battle shonen in my day to know that always happens, though we may never know whether it's due to editorial mandate or the artist's choice. BLACK TORCH does not have enough originality or courage to do something interesting with its female cast other than repeat the same tropes we've seen over and over.

Beyond that, I am saddened to say that Junichi Suwabe does not seem to be beefing with this child this time around; quite the opposite, he tells Jiro's grandfather that the grandchild he raised will be a valuable asset to the shadowy organization he's being recruited to after fusing with a powerful supernatural entity and… Hold on, I need to look up when Jujutsu Kaisen came out.

Apparently BLACK TORCH came first! Huh. Anyway…

For this episode, I watched the dub, because it's the second week of preview guide and it's starting to get really hard to pay attention to subtitles when I'm watching anime for three hours every day and spending another three hours or more writing it. The dub overall is fine; A.J. Beckles plays Jiro as one would any hotblooded shonen hero. Ben Balmaceda as Toshimasa, on the other hand, clearly struggles with the emotional content of the big grandfather-grandson fight. I'm not sure if that's because he's 33 and he can't emote while doing the old man voice, or because the script is the most embarrassing chuunibyou nonsense imaginable. His lecture about working for the Bureau of Espionage is like something out of Tails Gets Trolled.

I mean, the action is fine and all, but is it worth it to sit through this dialogue? I say no.

I certainly can't fault the protagonist of this story – not only can Jiro talk to animals, he also is very keen on protecting them. It's not every Shonen Jump show that has the requisite “beat up thugs under a bridge” scene be because the hero is trying to save a cat and a crow. Of course, you could argue that Jiro's animal-saving is also what gets him into the predicament he finds himself in at the end of the episode, because when the crow comes back to bring him to a severely injured black cat, things get strange fast.

Although, impending issues with the Ministry of Espionage notwithstanding, Rago's decision to bond/meld with Jiro isn't a terrible idea. Rago, a mononoke in the form of a black cat with a white sun on his back, understands Jiro in a way that his grandfather clearly does not. He knows that Jiro's not going to stop putting himself in danger to help animals. He also appreciates that Jiro nearly lost his life defending him. Healing his wound and living in his body means that Rago can both save Jiro's life and enable him to live the sort of life he's clearly set on. It's also a very feline solution to the problem; never mind being a supernatural being, Rago is also very much a cat, and that means that he's going to take the path that suits him, human wishes occasionally be damned.

I remember liking the manga upon which Black Torch is based, largely for the cat-centric approach to ninjutsu, but also because Jiro's goal felt more relatable than many another shounen protagonist's. He's earnest without being stupid and stupid in the way many teens are. The anime mostly captures that, and it generally makes it look good when Jiro's out using his ninja skills, although there's a strange sort of pause that always happens mid-fight, presumably so we can admire his fighting form. I don't love that the lone woman in this episode is nearly always shown from a low angle nor that Jiro's grandfather is an apparently unrepentant asshole, but this definitely has potential.

It also premiered as a simuldub in many languages. Both English and Japanese are good, and I found that I preferred Yūji Ueda's Rago to Keith Silverstein's but A.J. Beckles' Jiro to Ryōta Suzuki. Other voices didn't make much impression one way or another, but I think it's safe to say that watching this in your preferred language won't impact the quality of the show. I don't think this will break boundaries, but fans of shounen action should be entertained.

Poor Jiro seems to be the lone sane person in his own story. Perhaps that's a risk when it turns out that your grandfather turns out to be a retired operative from the modern iteration of the Oniwaban, a group of undercover agents established by the eighth Tokugawa shogun. (Hey, at least it's not the Shinsengumi this time.) And both his grandpa and all of the other modern ninja seem perfectly willing to blame Jiro for his own misfortune, citing the fact that he was the dumbass who saved a mononoke thinking it was a regular cat. But while they all seem to see this as proof of “no good deed goes unpunished,” I think they're missing the forest for the trees. Jiro may have rescued Rago, but then Rago rescued him right back, as did the crows he befriended. Jin's basically a Disney princess stuck in a Shonen Jump story, and that's my favorite aspect of this series.

While he may not do a good job of keeping his cool, that's understandable, given that the episode opens with him waking up in a hospital bed and being told that he's been declared missing and will now be forcibly assimilated into the Bureau of Espionage. He's bombarded with people telling him how wrong it was of him to save Rago, how he's irreparably screwed up his life, and how he now has no choices whatsoever. That Jin manages to think things through and escape to at least reassure his grandfather that he's alive is actually pretty impressive – and frankly says nothing good about the observational and predictive skills of the intelligence agency, who really should have figured out that he'd make a break for it and could ask for help from the animals he can speak to.

Perhaps they were all distracted by the way the camera loves Ichika's butt. I do not love the way she's being treated as more of an object than a character, given minimal snippy lines (to show us how tough and uncompromising she is) while the camera pans up and down her body and zooms in on her posterior. It smacks of the old so-called “wisdom” that boys won't read about girls, while girls will read about boys; publishing “advice” that seems designed around social norms rather than actually asking about or studying reading preferences. So far in this show we have the motherly female dog and the sexy Ichika, both slotting into archetypes rather than feeling like characters in their own right – and since Jiro, Rago, and Grandpa all are already established characters with motivations and personalities, it being only episode two is no excuse.

Despite that, Black Torch's second episode more firmly grounds it in being the definition of a three-star show. It's interesting enough to hold your attention but not good enough to make you forget about how long events are taking to unfold, while the animation is good but not spectacular. I'm not particularly interested in seeing more, but I also don't regret having seen this much, and I do hope it can finesse a less rushed ending than the manga.

I loved The Wild Thornberries when I was a kid, but even back then, I knew that it was missing some key ingredients to truly take it to the next level. Namely, the story of the young animal whisperer was missing some hearty doses of nü-metal and good old fashioned ultraviolence. It may have taken a couple of decades, but Black Torch has finally arrived to rectify this tragic missed opportunity. Jiro may be a cliche shonen manga protagonist in basically every other way, but the fact that he can befriend and talk to animals gives him just enough of that Eliza Thornberry edge to make me interested in seeing what his story is all about.

The cool thing about being a tough-guy Japanese punk who can talk to animals is that, in addition to chilling with the local alleycats and corvidae, Jiro can also talk to the spooky animal-shaped spirits and demons that have haunted the land for millennia (which are very real in this universe, naturally). The inciting incident of Jiro's journey is an encounter with a sickly black cat who reveals himself to an immortal mononoke named Rago, which honestly doesn't faze Jiro too much until he gets caught in a battle between Rago and another demon that ends with Jiro being fatally impaled. Naturally, our protagonist can't actually kick the bucket in the very first episode of his own show, so Rago lends his rescuer a hand by fuzing with the dying boys spirit and giving him badass shadow-ninja powers with which many nasty demons can be properly pulverized.

As a premiere, Black Torch is an exercise in extremely effective efficiency. There are no bones being made about complex characterization or subversive storytelling, here. Jiro is given just enough of a personality to go along with his animal-talking shtick that we understand what he's about as a hero, and then he is summarily executed by a big, bad monster so Rago can infuse him him Adorable Demon Kitty Magic. The English dub helps to solidify this mercenary take on the shonen action formula, with A.J. Beckles' Jiro and Keith Silverstein's Rago both invoking the steely edge that you would expect from this odd couple the moment you caught sight of the key art.

I was torn on what score to give this premiere, but I ultimately threw in an extra star on top of the three I would normally award such a series for demonstrating this degree of cold, calculating adherence to genre expectations. I wasn't being entirely silly when I said up at the top that I like the idea of The Wild Thornberries, Except With More Cheesy Butt-Rock and Exploitative Gore.” If all Jiro could do was jump around and punch monsters with the usual ninja mudras and psychic blasts, that would be one thing. But Jiro is in this to protect the furry friends that make everyone's lives better, and his partner is a sick, quasi-evil cat that can transform into a satanic shadow horror straight from Lovecraft's nightmares. If that isn't worth a whole extra star in the Preview Guide, then I don't know what is.

Episode two of Black Torch continues the show's trend of confidently breezing through every trope and plot beat you would expect from a typical shonen action anime, with its main appeal being a general sense of style and enough confidence to sell the cliches briskly enough to prevent any viewers who have seen an anime in the last twenty years from getting bored. Also, Jiro's partner in his demon-fighting adventures is a grumpy, slightly-evil cat. All in all, we could certainly be doing a lot worse when it comes to greasy anime junk food.

This second episode takes a while to find its groove, since it spends most of its time running through the expositional motions of recapping Jiro's situation and explaining what the Bureau of Espionage is about, none of which contains any plot or world building details that will shock or impress any but the most neophyte of anime fans. What keeps the episode interesting, as was the case last week, is Jiro's likeable personality and banter with his animal pals, including Rago. A lot of these shonen manga aimed at slightly older preteens and middle schoolers go for an aloof hero who doesn't even really give a damn about saving the world, but its easy for that approach to spill over into irritating edgelord territory. Jiro is no edgelord. He's just a punk who can talk to animals that doesn't have much patience for wasting time.

The show doesn't care to waste our time, either, which I appreciate. Even when we get to scenes that other shows would try to wring as much trite drama out of as possible, like the reveal that Jiro's grandfather is completely in on the whole underworld conspiracy of mononoke and the BoE, Black Torch cuts to the chase and gets to the ass-whooping as soon as possible. Jiro himself can basically only react with a smirk and a shrug as he starts to throw hands with his homicidal grandpa.

I can see a lot of people writing off Black Torch as generic action slop, and while I can definitely agree with the “generic” descriptor, I would have to push back against anyone trying to pass this series off as “slop.” That word, despite being nearly ruined thanks to the advent of all this GenA.I. crap, still has meaning to me, and that meaning is to describe only the most self-indulgently bland and pointless tripe. I watched an entire season of Tougen Anki, and I've already written tens-of-thousands of words this Preview Guide season decrying some of the truly soulless dreck we've been forced to shovel down. I know what slop is, and Black Torch ain't it. This show, for as dumb and shallow as it has proven to be so far, still has a creative spark that comes shining through these first two episodes. If nothing else, you can tell its author and animators are all having a fun time making it. I had a fun time watching it, too, which counts for a hell of a lot these days.

Yes, I will take a generic shonen for $500 please. I've already complained a lot about the generic fantasy shows that have come out this season, so of course I have to do the same about the generic shonen of the season. Honestly, I have seen this exact premiere probably a dozen times over the course of my life, and while I can't say I was necessarily bored for reasons I'll get into in a minute, I also can't say that I was particularly interested in any attempt at emotional investment that this first episode tried to give me. I think I was more caught up in just how bizarre some of the buildups and explanations were. The main character was trained in how to use ninjitsu in the modern day and his grandfather happens to have this incredible sword? Sure, why the hell not?

I didn't care about Jiro's relationship with this demonic cat. His ability to talk to animals, while initially kind of interesting, feels like it was just an excuse for the two to be able to talk to each other and I could call pretty much every plot point that took place during the course of this premiere within the first five minutes. The main thing that this premiere had going for it was that it was dripping with style and definitely trying to follow that “rule of cool” mentality. The dub has this really fun attitude to it, the animation is stellar (even if the choreography is a little bit messy) and my God this soundtrack is probably gonna be the most memorable thing about this show. Also, I will always enjoy Keith Silverstein playing some kind of jaded creature because that man could read the phone book to me and I will be ready, listening with bated breath.

Outside of those admittedly superficial things, there's not really a lot here to talk about. I'm already making predictions for what episode two is going to be about like how Jiro is probably gonna join this mysterious organization as a part of some deal, he's going to be at odds with a lot of his teammates, one of which is undoubtedly going to be some kind of hard ass on him and there's going to be some kind of generic secret war that's going on that Jiro is going to need to participate in. I guess if you've never seen a shonen before then this could be interesting, but I'm gonna need a little bit more before I just throw this into the “no different than anything else I've seen” pile.

OK, I pretty much called everything that was going to happen in this episode. The impression I got from the premiere was that this was going to be a pretty typical and straightforward shounen. The second episode only affirms that fact, but I will admit, I did actually feel a little something towards the second half of this episode after it got all of the very obvious exposition out of the way. Jiro is definitely between a rock and a hard place, forced to engage in a world that he was only passively interacting with before, but now he doesn't really have a choice. I'm actually surprised at how well Rago is taking the whole thing. Despite their bickering, there is a noticeable difference in how protective the two are of each other compared to before, so I appreciate the subtle growth there.

The second half of the episode is where the heart really is. I was actually surprised how involved the grandfather was going to be in Jiro's development, but given his position, that makes sense. This is basically the equivalent of a veteran soldier telling his son not to go off to war because of all of the atrocities that he needed to commit. Despite the obvious supernatural premise, there did seem to be a solid groundedness to the emotional back-and-forth. The downside is that Jiro doesn't really have a counter argument for any of the things that his grandfather is bringing up, he's just stubbornly taking all of it on his chin, and that eventually convinces his grandfather to back off. I think I was enjoying the buildup so much that I was expecting a bit more of an emotional resolution, but Jiro's speech didn't hit nearly as well as when the grandfather himself was speaking. I think the problem is that the grandfather feels like an actually fleshed out character in this episode whereas Jiro feels a little bit one note.

Still, the style is on point with some pretty fluid animation and the gorgeous soundtrack. The choreography definitely took a hit this episode but considering that it was mostly two men punching each other, I shouldn't really be that surprised. That being said, I do like the effect that they're doing with the dark fire that Rago seems to manifest. I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what that power is able to do in the future but this is definitely gonna be more of a passive watch for me. It might not be something that I look forward to every week since I already feel like I know everything that is going to happen, but I think this would make solid background noise while I'm working on other stuff. Again, it helps that the dub is very solid across the board.

P.S. I will say I'm not looking forward to all of the ass shots that are undoubtedly going to be centered around Ichika. I find it funny that the cinematography was actually pretty good until she entered a room and then suddenly I'm met with these random shots of her butt. Never change anime.