Spring 2025 Anime Season Roundup

Written by Rei Caldombra 6/16/25 Video: Currently cannot record so coming soon!

Previous Roundup: Winter 2025 Anime Season Roundup — Blog Under a Log

Tis the end of another Spring of anime as we head towards the start of another Summer. This season I kept it light and watched just four shows, all of which I enjoyed. To contrast, my next season is a big one with double the amount of shows. I’ll get into what I’ll be watching next season after I give my general and spoiler free thoughts on what I watched in Spring 2025.

Guilty Gear: Strive Dual Rulers

I don’t play Guilty Gear as I’m really not big on fighting games, but I consider myself a fan of the series. I just like its unique style and fun vibe along with its interesting characters and great music. So I thought I would give the anime a try. This anime was certainly some anime style video game nonsense. But I didn’t expect much different from Guilty Gear. And this was still fun and enjoyable despite its various flaws. The story is not particularly interesting or compelling to me, so I can’t recommend it based on that. The quality of the art and animation is a mixed bag. It emulated the style of the games very well, and some parts looked awesome. But there was a decent amount of repetition and reuse, and a few moments that did not look good. In particular there were a lot of still frames. They often looked cool, dynamic and stylized. But nonetheless still frames that often brought you out of the dynamic action. But when it’s really moving it often looks great. This anime is very much a marketing campaign for Unika that functions as a side story. I think Unika was fine as a character, not particularly compelling but functional and likeable as a Deuteragonist. I think the people complaining about Unika’s design not fitting in with the cast are being ridiculous. “She looks like a fan made OC”. Ok, so does most of Guilty’s Gear’s cast. Hers is not among my favorites (some of my favs are Johnny, May and Happy Chaos), but I think her design is solid. Another thing is that if you are a Guilty Gear fan, you may be sad that some of your favorite characters don’t get screen time. If you are a Guilty Gear fan who just wants to see Guilty Gear characters do things, you should have fun with this. But if you want a strong story and production or aren’t a Guilty Gear fan, you can steer clear of this. 

Mono

For anyone who doesn’t know, Mono is a manga by the same author as Yuru Camp. If you like Yuru Camp, you gotta watch it. The comfy atmosphere, endearing characters, goofy gags, and educational content on a variety of hobbies and activities are completely on point. With Mono, rather than camping the main focus is primarily split between the high school kids’ filming for their club activities and a mangaka getting inspiration for her story. With both of these pursuits overlapping under the umbrella of this group traveling and having exciting experiences together. When it comes to the characters, I think Mono actually has a slight edge over Yuru Camp, particularly because of Haruno and Kako. I like that this series has a smaller group of students, with adults taking 2 slots of the main 5. But overall, I do still think Yuru Camp is better. I will be doing a full review for Mono soon where I’ll go more in depth on it, so please stick around for that!

Food for the Soul

The soul was the food we made along the way. Please see my first impressions review if you want to hear my thoughts on the first 3 episodes. Continuing on from the first 3 episodes, I’ve still been enjoying the show’s comfy and fun atmosphere broadly focused on food. The 5th member of the main cast who was added is really great. I would’ve loved to be in a club like this back in college. I was very happy being involved in my college’s anime and tabletop gaming clubs though. The art and animation also got a bit better as it went on, which I made a minor criticism on. I have not gotten the stronger college vibes that I wanted though, a disappointment but not a major issue. It still doesn’t hit the level of other shows in this genre like Yuru Camp to me, but it is still a solid wholesome time that I can recommend if that’s your thing.

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty

Please see my first impressions review if you want to hear my thoughts on the first 3 episodes. This show has been so fun and refreshing to watch. Like with Food for the Soul, the characters who got properly introduced after my first impressions were fantastic additions. I especially love Extra compliments go to it for how well they handled introducing them. Without being specific, I thought how they were going about it could have played out badly but it was the opposite. This was a moment of strong writing, and in general the writing has been great. The characters are very engaging and full of personality. The juxtaposition of these aggressive and raunchy girls and their moments with the upper class setting continued to work great. Even though girls band anime have been very common recently, this show does a lot to set itself apart. If you’re looking for a show about music or enjoy the girls do activities genre, this one is a lot more engaging and unique than others. Because of its differences it has a solid handful of surprises in a genre that can be pretty formulaic. The closest comparison I can make is to Girls Band Cry, if you liked the energy and aggression of one of these you’ll definitely like the other. This is my strongest recommendation of the season.

Now onto a few accolades for fun- I will name Rock is a Lady’s Modesty as my favorite of the season. My favorite ED is Food for the Soul’s, no contest. It is so upbeat and cheerful, encapsulating the warm and fun vibes of the show perfectly. I love everything about it. There’s a solid chance it will be my favorite ED of the year, but there’s still plenty of year left. All of the OPs of this season are good, but none of them stood out to me in particular as a banger. But I’ll go with Rock is a Lady’s Modesty as it’s a solid jam that builds up your energy for the episode.

Summer 2025 Anime

This summer has a ton of sequels, many of which I am very excited for. I will be watching Dr. Stone: Science Future Part 2, Call of the Night / Yofukashi no Uta Season 2, Kaiju no. 8 / Kaijuu 8-gou Season 2, Dandadan Season 2, My Dress up Darling / Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru Season 2 and Reborn as a Vending Machine Season 2. All of these are series that I am a big fan of. A few of these have been brought up in previous roundups, and Kaiju No. 8 and Reborn as a Vending Machine have their own articles if you’d like to check those out. I must say I am surprised that Reborn as a Vending Machine got a 2nd season, but it may be notably more popular in Japan than among the English-speaking audience. I think it’s a solid series that is underrated amongst isekai, so I’m super excited for it. When it comes to what I am most excited for I have to go with Dr. Stone.

Even when the amount of new seasons of old shows matches around what I would usually watch in a season in total, I can’t completely miss out on the new stuff. When it comes to new shows, I have two that I’m committed to watching. And for these I’ll include the official promotional video like I started doing in my last roundup.

City The Animation - Youtube PV: 『CITY THE ANIMATION』PV第1弾

I am ridiculously excited for City. I still consider Nichijou to be the best comedy anime and one of my favorite anime of all time. For me the latter is extremely high praise as I often don’t enjoy pure comedies enough. And I couldn’t be happier than Kyoto Animations is the one making City’s anime as well. Based on the PV it looks absolutely incredible. The art style is fantastic and the quality is beautiful. I cannot image Kyoani messing this up. This is one you do not want to miss out on, please give it a try.

The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity / Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku - Youtube PV: The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity | Official Trailer | Netflix

This one comes very highly regarded as an incredible romance. The basic premise is that the two main characters are students from different schools that both have a culture of hating the students from the other school. But the division won’t keep their blossoming connection apart. This show looks great from the trailer and I think the premise sounds interesting. I didn’t get a romance fix this Spring, so I’ll get one in Summer.

This brings us to 8 shows, certainly a lot but I don’t want to miss out on any of these. As the season goes on, I’ll tackle these as I can and see fit. I’ve got a lot of stuff to work on outside of seasonals too. Please look forward to it and thanks for reading! Let me know what shows you’re looking forward to.

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Relevant articles to Spring and Winter 2025

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty - First Impressions — Blog Under a Log — Blog Under a Log

Food For the Soul Anime - First Impressions — Blog Under a Log

Dissecting the Kaiju No. 8 OP (Non-Spoiler for Past Ep 2) — Blog Under a Log

Reborn as a Vending Machine is Way Better than you think. — Blog Under a Log