July - September • 145 anime
Summer 2025 leaned on sequels while still throwing a lot of fresh originals into the mix across 135 releases. My Dress-Up Darling Season 2 kept its charm, and the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle film brought the theatrical spectacle back.
The season mostly felt like a careful mix of comfort and risk: familiar franchises returned, but a surprising number of originals actually stuck in your head. Fantasy and action were the loudest genres, but comedy and music moments landed too. CloverWorks was an easy name to spot thanks to polished production on a few key shows.
My Dress-Up Darling Season 2 doubled down on the small, character-first beats that made the first season click, with cleaner animation and quieter scenes that still landed emotionally. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle — Part 1 (Akaza Returns) lived up to the theater experience, with frame-by-frame choreography and payoff on a major antagonist. Kaiju No.8 Season 2 kept scaling up the fights and the stakes while keeping its lighter banter intact. And Takopi's Original Sin surprised people by pairing deceptively cute design with a darker emotional core, which made it one of the most talked-about originals of the quarter.
