The Column at the Corner of Romance and Comedy – This Week in Anime

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Steve and Lucas explore Fall 2025’s rom-com offerings to find the perfect series.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.

Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

All titles mentioned are streaming on Crunchyroll, except A Star Brighter Than the Sun, which is on Amazon Prime.

Lucas

Steve, a new season of anime is upon us, and that means we have another opportunity to…wait. Hold on. I’ve just learned that The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is getting a third season!!! Peak Romcom is coming back, baybeeeeee!

Though 100 GFs might have to start putting in some work to defend its crown, as the Fall 2025 collection of romcom anime was a bit more robust than I was expecting. Sure, there are some trashier entries, but even those are a bit more informed and well-produced than I’ve come to expect from these kinds of titles. What did you make of the romcom genre fare as a whole this time around?

Steve

I’m just happy to avoid getting stuck with the isekai column. Truck-kun won’t be slaking his thirst with my blood this season.

But more to the point, I’d concur there’s quite a bit of variety and intrigue in the romcom sphere this autumn. I also see that most of these shows didn’t cut daily streaming reviews, so I’d encourage our audience to look into some of these more closely. You might be surprised.

I’ll be honest, Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days was one of the surprises of the season for me! Not because it seems to be doing anything wildly original or elevating this genre, but because this is the first romcom I’ve seen that acknowledges that some people are into dudes who are a little roughed up!

It’s funny, throughout the premiere, I was almost expecting some kind of Phantom Thread-esque twist. Like maybe Kiyoko was secretly orchestrating all of Yano’s accidents to dote on him. Love speaks many languages, after all.

But by all accounts, everyone in this show is a good bean.

Which is maybe to the show’s detriment! While I did enjoy what I watched, there’s not quite enough thematic meat on Yano-kun‘s (likely broken) bones to keep me coming back for more. I’m happy to change that opinion if I hear some mid-season chatter about the story picking up, though.

It’s very deliberately paced—which is a kind way to call it slow as molasses. If you’re in the right frame of mind, Yano-kun could be a nice and easygoing show to wind down with. A romcom in the comfort sense more than the comedic one.

Sorry to say, but if I’m looking for a comfort watch this season, it’s going to be Mechanical Marie! Which I can only describe as one of those anime that would be amazing if only it could figure out how to be good.

lucas_03 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

I have to give it props for having the audacity to just insert illustrations into episodes instead of trying to convey the intensity of a moment with its more rudimentary animation.
It’s still corner-cutting, but at least it’s fun and different corner-cutting!

I’d say the premise is also just stupid enough to have some real promise. Arthur grows to distrust all people because of their constant attempts to murder him, so he puts all his trust in the robot maid Marie. Who isn’t a robot? And he just never bothers to check.

steve05 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

steve06 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

To some extent, you have to know what you’re doing to run with a plot that silly and convoluted. And sure enough, there are some decent gags in here.

steve07 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

steve08 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

As established in our Fujimoto column from a while back, I’m a sucker for love stories about two messed-up idiots who manage to make things work despite (or maybe because of) the several tons of baggage they both carry. For me, Mechanical Marie manages to strike that perfect balance of stupid and sweet.

lucas_04 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

But, MAN, is this a rough anime to watch! The animation is as stiff as Mari’s poker face, and I doubt these characters are going to rise above “my oomfies” status and become thought-provoking explorations of the human condition anytime soon. If I continue with this series, it’ll probably be as a before-bed manga read-through.

While I can’t say I love it, I will award it bonus points for Marie doing her best Roberta impersonation in the first episode.

steve09 — © Aki Akimoto,HAKUSENSHA/ Mechanical Marie Production Committee

steve10 — © Rei Hiroe / Shogakukan • Black Lagoon Production Team

Mechanical Marie also isn’t even Fall’s only romcom option with a heroine who has trouble wearing her emotions on her face. This may shock you, but in Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota, Kashiwada is…how should I put this…inexpressive.

steve11 — © 東ふゆ/KADOKAWA/顔に出ない柏田さんと顔に出る太田君製作委員会

With its washed-out color palette, all of this anime felt pretty inexpressive to me.

lucas_05 — © 東ふゆ/KADOKAWA/顔に出ない柏田さんと顔に出る太田君製作委員会

I know I’m being a little critical with that being my first reaction to Inexpressive Kashiwada, but I completely forgot about this anime until you brought it up just now. Maybe there’s a kernel of a good “opposites attract” story in here, but I can’t see if it’s barely moving characters find that kernel.

The title of the show basically tells you everything you need to know. It’s cute and lighthearted, but it lacks pizzazz. And mostly, it made me think of how Teasing Master Takagi-san is a more immediately engaging take on a guy constantly hoisting his own petard in a futile attempt to impress his crush.

steve12 — © 東ふゆ/KADOKAWA/顔に出ない柏田さんと顔に出る太田君製作委員会

I can’t say I mind the presentation, though. Like Yano-kun, it’s not an especially stand-out production, but it has a discernible style it’s aiming for, and that feels like half the battle with these adaptations nowadays.

steve13 — © 東ふゆ/KADOKAWA/顔に出ない柏田さんと顔に出る太田君製作委員会

That’s fair, and props to you for finding the strong points! I just could not find much to grasp with this one.

If we want to continue this trend of talking about shows with more limited production values first, what did you think of Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!?

All those noblemen should have minded their business instead of judging Melphiera’s sense of whimsy and particular penchant for girl dinner.

Quality-wise, I liked it a lot! I respect the moxie of a romcom with a genderswapped Senshi Dungeon Meshi as its heroine.

My first reaction was also that this was the first post Delicious in Dungeon getting big anime I’ve watched!
I liked this one well enough, and clearly, Crunchyroll thinks it has legs by making it one of their dubbed releases of the season. However, I might like DinD a bit too much to give this one a fair shake. No shade to Meat Milady, but anything that’s going to invite a comparison to DinD is going to lose that comparison, imo.

To be fair, outside of the tasty-looking monster meat, it doesn’t have much else in common with Delicious in Dungeon. The narrative sits firmly in the romance wheelhouse, and the odd foodstuffs are gastronomical garnish. But it’s an important garnish. It turns this meet-cute into a far superior meat-cute.

That’s fair. We do stan weird girls, here, and will forever defend women having hobbies, no matter how monstrous they may be.

How do we feel about tall girls a la A Star Brighter Than the Sun, though? Off the cuff, I will say that I, as a tall person, take umbrage with 5’6 being framed as tall in any circumstance!

Things work differently in the land of anime. But mostly I’m just happy to see more adaptations of shoujo manga that have an evident amount of love and care put into them.

Absolutely! Brighter Than the Sun isn’t going to go down as having the best animation of the year by any means, but Studio KAI put a lot of work into establishing a sense of space and environment. This works especially well in the opening episode, which is nearly a montage of the leading characters and their lives together, as the more daring color palettes make these scenes feel like vivid memories being made in real time.

It’s extremely lovable. Though I should mention, for this column’s theme, that it is far more rom than com. While it sprinkles humor into these characters, it’s more interested in their interiority and drama. In a good way!

© 河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会	© 河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会
© 河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会	© 河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会

That’s a good point, and I sure do wish Let’s Play was doing anything in a good way!

As this season began, I recalled that I read the opening chapters of the webcomic that Let’s Play is based on when I interviewed for a gig at WEBTOON a while back, and even that experience did not prepare me for just how alien this anime was going to be in both its writing and execution. How does a work with character designs this cute and thought out have some of the worst, nonsensical backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an anime production!??

I was dying at the bust of Medici(?) in the background of this shot. It’s on an entirely different plane of existence.

Let’s Play definitely stands out, for better and for worse. Like you said, it’s a webcomic adaptation, which already distinguishes it from the rest of its peers this season. True to form, the characters and story are exaggerated and cartoonish, and to be honest, I kinda dug that. It feels weird, and that’s better than feeling boring.

I can’t even begin to describe how hard I choked on my drink when the goddamn Skyrim sneaking HUD showed up in this 2025 anime! What is this show, and how does it feel like it was drawn by every pixiv artist and written by every Tumblr author of all skill levels simultaneously!??

Let’s Play isn’t even close to “good” and its misunderstanding of both the mechanics and cultural dissemination of video games is deeply frustrating to me. Still, it’s not good in such an interesting way that I have a hard time pulling away from it.

It’s a fascinating mess, and I can’t lie and say I’m not curious where its absurd web of characters and coincidences will lead. Plus, I respect any heroine who turns down a date to game.

© Let’s Play製作委員会	© Let’s Play製作委員会
© 2022 Kotoyama・Shogakukan／Call of the Night Production Committee	© 2022 Kotoyama・Shogakukan／Call of the Night Production Committee

Also, I’m sorry, but I really want to see the version of this story where the inciting incident is Northernlion getting frustrated by a “Sort Your Salad Simulator.” It’s already like 90% of the way there.

I could definitely see Let’s Play escaping the anime community’s orbit of some select streamers picking it up and start commenting on it, but with this year’s TwitchCon being a pretty public shit show, they’ve probably got bigger things to focus on right now. Though there’s another anime with characters in the gaming industry this season, My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me!.

lucas_11 — © 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会

This is one of those “anime for people who like to be bullied” projects, and, while it doesn’t do much to rise above its predecessors, I was surprised by just how informed it seemed to be about BDSM imagery and paraphernalia.

I thought this one was gonna annoy me—and it did—but it’s also so ridiculous and trashy that it ended up mostly working for me. It has all the tropes. It has all the cliches. If there’s a refuge in audacity, then My Friend’s Little Sister is smack dab in the middle of it.

steve33 — © 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会

It might have the best OP of the bunch, too? It’s kinetic and creative, and it’s stuffed with a bunch of video game and other meme references. Which, again, would be cloying if not for the extra bit of oomph it has. And that oomph, in this case, manifests as a pair of yukkuris playing a knockoff Suika Game.

© 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会	© 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会
© 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会	© 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会

I’d agree with you on the OP, but I find it a little weird that both the OP and the ED frame the two girls as being love rivals when the show hasn’t set that up, and it doesn’t feel true to either character right now. But I agree with your larger point; I’d never recommend Little Sister to anyone, but I think it’s neat that this anime was made by people who know what keyholder powerplay dynamics are.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

steve38 — © 三河ごーすと・SBクリエイティブ／「いもウザ」製作委員会

So, jumping back to Let’s Play for a moment, it is somehow both a gamer romcom and an office romcom. And it’s hardly the only office romcom on the docket this fall. One of the other options is My Awkward Senpai, which continues our trend of anime titles with a real sense of mystery to them.

steve39 — © Makoto Kudo/SQUARE ENIX © 工藤マコト/SQUARE ENIX･不器用な先輩。製作委員会

Despite committing a cardinal sin of anime in introducing a character chest first, I dug this one more than I expected! I currently work in publicity with a focus on nerdy media, and I’ve filled leadership positions at past jobs, so this anime manages to hit me where I live from time to time.

© Makoto Kudo/SQUARE ENIX ©工藤マコト/SQUARE ENIX･不器用な先輩。製作委員会

Though it probably also helps that they made the lead cute as heck.

lucas_15 — © Makoto Kudo/SQUARE ENIX ©工藤マコト/SQUARE ENIX･不器用な先輩。製作委員会

lucas_16 — © Makoto Kudo/SQUARE ENIX ©工藤マコト/SQUARE ENIX･不器用な先輩。製作委員会

As a working stiff in the email mines myself, I understand the appeal of office-based courtship shenanigans. But I think this was the most forgettable of the bunch for me. The premiere just hits the same notes over and over, and the characters didn’t give me much else to hang onto.

steve40 — © Makoto Kudo/SQUARE ENIX © 工藤マコト/SQUARE ENIX･不器用な先輩。製作委員会

Valiiiiiid~ I think we’ve only got a few shows left, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out to Hands off: Sawaranaide Kotesashi-kun for being an ecchi anime airing on Crunchyroll (and Ocean Veil) unedited in 2025!

It’s super generic, right down to the rundown dormitory that all of these kinds of harem stories take place in for some reason, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to watch something of this ilk for this season’s round-up!

If nothing else, it’s a reassurance that we haven’t completely lost Crunchyroll to the corporatists. If they’re amenable to airing this dreck, then there’s still hope.

Otherwise, yeah, not much to say about this one other than the fact that it has nipples. If that’s all you need, then godspeed.

As the episodes were running, I was almost ready to give Hands Off praise for giving the different women in its cast different body types, which would fit with all of them competing in different sports at high levels; but it doesn’t commit to that outside of making the volleyball girl taller and fuller figured, so no flowers for this show.

lucas_18 — © ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会

However, I can instead hoist all of that praise onto Plus-Sized Misadventures in Love, which is light on the romance early on but succeeds in being an anime that challenges fatphobic stereotypes, which has been desperately needed in this space for a long time.

A spiritual successor to Maebashi Witches‘ sharp takedown of fatphobia, Plus-Sized Misadventures branches out into very silly and very serious directions at the same time. In most cases, I would call that clumsy, but I think the jarring tonal shifts here feel bizarrely incisive. Like, Yumeko’s super chipper attitude works as a meaningful contrast against the glimpses she sees of her previous self. The show doesn’t shy away from mining that contrast for comedy, but it reaches rather affecting heights too.

© ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会	© ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会
© ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会	© ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会

Sure, at face value, the amnesiac storyline is ridiculous. But as a literary device, it shows the audience how flimsy and superficial our societally ingrained prejudices can be. Not to mention that forgetting about the existence of social media has to be an instant 500% boost to your mental well-being.

steve47 — © ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会

Hey, there are further-fetched amnesiac stories out there with much worse politics, so I think Plus-Sized is more than allowed this somewhat ridiculous inciting incident!
And with that, I think we’ve covered every romcom of the season? Am I forgetting anything? If not, I’d say I stand by my opening evaluation of this season’s offerings; nothing’s blowing me away, but we covered more interesting and thought-provoking works than what I’m used to in these seasonal overview exercises!

There are some romcom adjacent titles if we really want to be thorough. Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle certainly possesses qualities of roms and/or coms, but I neither laughed nor felt much love after I finished watching it, so I don’t think we have to pry into it much further.

steve48 — © Hiromu/Shogakukan/Chiramune Partners

steve49 — © Hiromu/Shogakukan/Chiramune Partners

More positively, May I Ask for One Final Thing? has some (bad) romance and lots of (literal) punchiness, but something tells me that TWIA readers will be hearing more on that later this week, so I think we can also hold off on that one.

I made it as clear as I could that Chitose should stay in that Ramune Bottle, and that said bottle should probably be recycled, in the preview guide. But I’m excited to hear what our TWIA cohorts have to say about May I Ask for One Final Thing? in the coming days, and even more excited to line this genre romp up again next season!

For now, at least as far as romcoms are concerned, the fall season is pretty darn formidable! Lots of options, and nothing I’d call offensively bad or abjectly boring. If I had to pick one, it’d be Plus-Sized Misadventures, which is currently sitting at a criminally low 2.7 rating on Crunchyroll. Not that this score means anything. It definitely doesn’t reflect the actual quality of the anime. It’s funny, life-affirming, and it has a murder mystery brewing in the background. What more could you ask for?

steve51 — © ままかり／ソルマーレ編集部・アニメ『デブとラブと過ちと！』製作委員会

Considering I no longer have to ask for another season of 100 GFs, nothing! I’ve got my personal peak romcom in tow and plenty to help me scratch that itch in the meantime. Fall 2025 may not be as jam-packed as the Summer season, but there’s still plenty to appreciate and I’m looking forward to catching what I can!

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today24h24_x91uezمنذ 3 أسابيع

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