January 2026 Anime Roundup

Now that I'm a full-time professor, the holidays and New Years season comes with a lot of free time. I have to prep for spring semester of course, but it's important to recover from grading last-minute assignments and final reports and such. I made sure to catch up on a lot of otaku media this January.

Fate/Strange Fake is finally releasing episodes after the teaser film released last year. Fate/Grand Order did something like this years ago, but the release schedule for that FGO spinoff is decidedly all over the place because Aniplex resumed with Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia and the Final Singularity, then the Camelot films. 

Strange Fake feels closer to the Apocrypha series with precisely how...strange it is. There's a grail war in what looks like Arizona or some other Southwestern region of the US, and the war is a front for an actual summoning that needed the first war as a catalyst? Vampires are also in this universe, a subject straight out of another Type-Moon vehicle, Tsukihime. Strange Fate is undoubtedly cool, so I'm along for the ride anyway. But is the plot easy to follow? Hell no.

There's also Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3. I'd love to stop watching this series, as it's terribly depressing, but I can't. The animation is too good to look away. Episode 3 of this season almost brought me to tears with unpalatable mounds of exposition. Episode 4, though? Sheesh, I had to watch it twice because it was so flashy. One of the coolest fighting episodes of anything I've ever watched. Apparently, JJK manga die-hards were upset about it in Japan because the content in Episode 4 wasn't treated with enough gravitas, but they're insane. Anime should tell stories in the best way anime can, full stop.

Now, I engaged with two dark fantasy shows recently, Clevatess and Sentenced to be a Hero. I watched the former in Spanish, so I relied a lot on visual cues for context and missed out on some plot nuances, but Clevatess wasn't as good as I'd hoped. When they introduced a protagonist who resembles Claire from Claymore, and the story took place on a darkened continent surrounded by monsters and divine beasts like Claymore... Even forgetting about Claymore for a second, Clevatess is a weird experience. 

Hero Alicia is immediately defanged by Clevatess, one of four beast kings that humanity is trying to overcome so they can expand their territory. She is turned into a corpse-slave that lives thanks to Clevatess' blessing, and helps the beast king look after the infant heir to a kingdom he absolutely wrecks in the first episode. The earlier violence yields to some misunderstandings about breastfeeding, so Clevatess goes to find someone (other than the non-lactating Alicia) to feed this baby, and then the team actually finds a slave who happens to be lactating... Look, some stories just exist to satisfy a creative itch, I suppose. Not mine, to be clear.

Sentenced to be a Hero, on the other hand, successfully mixes dark fantasy with pathos in a non-creepy way. In this story, "heroes" are ironically named because they commit terrible crimes and are brought into an infinite-reanimation cycle to serve the state; in other words, more anime slaves. Xylo is one such slave, but instead of managing a royal child and searching for tiddy-milk, he accidentally bonds with an ultra powerful goddess who sees the good inside of him. Said goddess is naturally in the vessel of a child, but it's not weird, I swear! The story reminds me of other long-term revenge plots like Tales of Berseria and, dare I say it? Nah, you already know the anime I'm thinking of.

And then there's Frieren. Need I say more? If you liked the first season, you'll like the second season. I loved this story as it was released in manga (which is now in HIATUS, damnit), so the show manages to do it justice with more of that contemplative silence, serene countryside, sprawling fantasy music, and the occasional combat sequence. Just watch it, y'all. 

Know what I don't recommend? Tune into the Midnight Heart anime, which looks stiff at times and wonky at others. The manga's hilarious, so read that instead.

Frieren Would've Done the Same

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is the best anime ever made according to many corners of the internet. It surpassed Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on MAL, has a 100% average on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.9 on IMDb, and has become a social media darling thanks to its eponymous, small-statured elf. After ending last season, the memes of Frieren, Fern, and Stark in modern day swag have kept the series alive until next season. Then, Ruixian Xu stopped a knife attack in Taiwan because Himmel "would've done the same," thrusting the franchise that never quite went away into the spotlight again. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Although our Taiwanese vigilante was obviously using a refrain Frieren makes throughout the series, it's notable that Himmel is dead by the time the story starts. For those who also read the manga, Himmel was both savior and folk hero during his time, making sure to do what little he could for everyone he met during the ten-year journey to fight the demon king. I just think it's odd for fandom to attribute acts of present-day heroism to someone who isn't canonically alive but lives on in the memories (and many, many monuments) scattered throughout the land. There's someone who is far more deserving of this hero-worship: Frieren herself.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

The quirk and charm of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is that the story is rooted in saudade, the wistful memories that Himmel left Frieren with upon his passing. We almost never see Himmel as he lived but through Frieren's recollections. If we use Serie's statement about remembering each one of her disciples throughout her centuries, then I'd also assume Frieren, as an elf, has perfect memory recall. The flashbacks we see of Himmel are valuable as meeting him in real-time. But that's cheating for us as an audience, isn't it?

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Imagine Frieren: Beyond Journey's End without the Himmel flashbacks. The characters would be the same, but the presentation would be more somber, focused on a widow who cares for the children of her best friends as they guide her to heaven. She would recall stories of her lover (a word she doesn't use because elves seem incapable of doing so) and how she became a better person because of him. Instead of flashbacks, we'd watch Frieren's attention shift to a past that was, in elf time, only moments earlier. Her emotionless features may twinge with warm joy and piercing sorrow--until remembering the purpose of her journey. I think that Frieren, the same Frieren who gives herself to anyone in need because of a man we never had the privilege to know, would be someone worthy of our praise. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Next time you do a good deed, tell people that "Frieren would've done the same." Thanks for coming to my TED talk.