The Best Anime Premieres of Summer 2026

2026 in anime has already been one for the record books. Winter gave us two of the decade's best shows with Journal with Witch and Shiboyugi, spring was stuffed to the gills with beautiful animation and thoughtful adaptations—and now, summer is somehow looking even better.

I consider an anime season good if it has a few shows I might continue. Summer 2026 has no less than five premieres I'd consider mandatory must-watches, running the gamut from arthouse period pieces to crowd-pleasing cyberpunk, along with a number of genuine delights beyond them. And that's without touching on great returning shows like You and I Are Polar Opposites or The Elusive Samurai. Maybe it's karma for putting up with a full decade of isekai slop, maybe it's just production schedules fortuitously lining up, but this could turn out to be one of the best anime seasons ever.

The world may be on fire, but that means there's never been a better time to stay in the shade and watch cartoons. Let's run down the best premieres!

Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia 

Animated by the eccentric studio Science Saru, co-directed by powerhouse Naoko Yamada and rising star Abel Góngora, and adapted from mangaka Tomato Soup's well-regarded series, there is no show this season with a better pedigree than Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia. The behind-the-scenes talent is clear from the opening sequence as we watch young protagonist Sitara flee through a rendition of ancient Tus, Iran, that looks like a living picture book. Simple background art is colored like paint peeling from hot stucco and allows for creative shot compositions, viewing the streets through open windows and fisheye lenses. Sitara herself is conveyed through bubbly, expressive animation that accentuates her childish stature and the bounce of her clothing. Visually, it has more in common with a Cartoon Saloon feature like The Secret of Kells than most anime, and it's lovely in motion.

Apart from its unusual style, what struck me most about Jaadugar is that it is an unabashedly Muslim historical drama. Streets are populated with distinct characters wearing hijabs and turbans, and the show is well researched, with customs like iddah (a mourning period during which widows can't remarry) and daily prayer playing roles in the first episode. Sitara's story involves her growing fascination with math and science during the height of the Islamic Golden Age, when scholars and philosophers in the region made incredible advancements, and characters express a deeply Muslim sense of pride in the act of learning. It's refreshing to see such casually positive, caricature-free representations of Muslim and Middle-Eastern characters—it's a rich culture unexplored in most anime and Western shows, and it fills my heart to see Jaadugar's team approach it with such curiosity.

Yet the show minces no words about the historical realities it is based on. Sitara, in that opening sequence, is an enslaved girl failing to run away from her captors. After she's purchased by a kind widow, the first episode plays from her perspective like an idyllic fairy tale as she is integrated into the household and educated by her master's family. But on the periphery, we're reminded time and time again of Sitara's condition. Shot compositions frame her as trapped inside the mansion's patterned windows, and fellow slave Anis tells her that regardless of her masters' whims, she still cannot choose her own fate. She is happy, but she is not free.

All of this is setup for the show's second episode, when Mongol raiders enter the story and take away everything Sitara has come to love. This part of her journey is unflinching yet captivating, delivering tragedy in poetic, human terms. We linger on the touch of two characters' hands as one tries to make another eat. A faraway death is shown as rose petals being pulled apart in a black void. Our cast clings to whatever precious little hope they can find—the thought that the house's young master may be alive in another city, the bonds between these found family members—only to watch those hopes slip away one by one. 

It's through these great hardships that the show's thoughts on freedom, choice, and the pursuit of knowledge begin to crystallize. It will take time to see how they develop, but my main takeaway from these first two episodes was one of empathy—empathy for a people separated from me by geography and time, the beauty and horror of their lived experiences stark and overwhelming. We currently live in dark times full of cruel men, and our forbears across the world lived through even darker. Yet many of them made it through, and perhaps we can also make it through the way they did, by clinging to whatever tiny hopes we can—sustenance, memory, a book, the touch of a friend's hand.

Jaadugar's premiere is a resounding success, and it affected me greatly. If you make time for only one show this season, make it this.

Goodbye, Lara

Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" has been adapted and remixed countless times, but never quite like this. Where other adaptations see Anderson's tale as an end goal, Goodbye, Lara sees it as a beginning—partway through this premiere, we run through the original fable in montage form as the titular mermaid Lara saves a drowning prince, trades her voice for human legs, and falls in love, all before meeting her tragic fate. But the story's most exciting turn comes at the end, when we find Lara may have a chance to do it all again, this time with a modern twist. 

Goodbye, Lara is anime studio Kinema Citrus's 15th anniversary project, and its production is magical. The show's aesthetic draw inspiration from 90s cell animation with mesmerizing results, with line art that has a hand-drawn quality to it and backgrounds that accent cool color palates with arresting pinks and reds. The whimsical production relishes in showing us romantic towers and grand palaces as much as the small details of the merfolks' home, where practically every underwater scene contains some charming marvel like sea anemone beds or anglerfish pets. And to cap it off, this premiere's animation is stellar—the show sells Lara's body being racked by sobs in the water just as well as it does the danger of her aunt Grace's face-morphing magic. 

In a season full of amazing productions, Goodbye, Lara's is one of the best, with heights that feel hypnotic. It has the texture of a great fable given life, with unexplained moralistic magic, rigid rules, and wickedness lurking just around the corner. It feels like a show out of time in the best way possible.

The World Is Dancing

The climax of The World Is Dancing's first episode contains a minute of the most jaw-dropping animation I've seen all year. Alone in a rickety shack near Ōan-era Kyoto, a woman, or perhaps a yokai, ferociously dances. Her movements are rendered in mixed-media animation styles: ink and pen on paper, sketchy digital line art, watercolor and paint-drip abstraction. Her violent gestures and stomps are drawn in ways that feel inhuman, but they resolve into beauty, as delicate pen strokes of hair falling around her face.

That sequence alone makes this one of the season's most essential premieres, but it works so well only because of the episode's sturdy foundation. Set against civil war in 1374 Kyoto, we follow 11-year-old boy Oniyasha, whose stern father is the lead dancer in a performing troupe. Oniyasha seeks his father's approval but fundamentally can't understand the appeal of his rigid dancing style. Outside the troupe, violence and inequality are rampant, and death is shown constantly hanging in Oniyasha's periphery. It's only when he accidentally sees that woman dancing alone, an expression of her raw fury and pain meant for no audience, that the nature of art as expression is revealed to him.

Director Toshimasa Kuroyanagi, who also adapted the cult-classic dictionary series The Great Passage, fills The World Is Dancing with expressive characters, bright colors, and voluminous acting. My only reservation is about its numerous digressions into cartoony comedy, which flatten the characters and take some of the oomph out of their emotions—but having seen the spectacular second episode, I can say the show knows when to play things straight. This is a very capable premiere with a winning aesthetic and highlights unlike anything in mainstream anime. If it leans even further into its emotional core and keeps up its unearthly dance sequences, it will be well worth seeing through to the end. 

The Ghost in the Shell

A lot of people likely know the Ghost in the Shell franchise from Mamoru Oshii's philosophical films, Kenji Kamiyama's procedural series Stand Alone Complex, or, god forbid, the Scarlett Johansson movie. Yet Masamune Shirow's original manga was often much weirder and sillier than the adaptations that overshadowed it, and Science Saru's The Ghost in the Shell gives us a chance to experience his original vision in motion. 

With stylized character designs by Scott Pilgrim Takes Off's Shūhei Handa and a rip-roaring jazz soundtrack, this incarnation of GitS plays like a rambunctious cross between Cowboy Bebop and Kill la Kill, featuring stylized fight scenes, snappy digital animation, and more retrofuturistic technology than you can shake a brain-to-brain aux cord at. To that end, this version of leading lady Major Motoko Kusanagi is a far cry from her original movie counterpart and spends the episode bickering with her team, hacking politicians to make them punch themselves, and wearing the hell out of a pinstripe shirt. There are glimpses of the franchise's hard sci-fi worldbuilding in the margins—along with some anti-big-government sentiments that may or may not have aged well—but this premiere is much less concerned with Ghosts and brain dives than it is with rollicking action and funny faces. It's a total blast.

Sparks of Tomorrow

Sparks of Tomorrow imagines an alternate-history early-1900s Kyoto where electricity hasn't been adopted and steam is still the main driver of industry. Directed by Minoru Ōta, who was responsible for the tour-de-force fifth episode of CITY The Animation last year, Sparks's secret weapon is its setting and the wondrous art that brings it to life. Studio KyoAni's brilliant character animation and compositing are on full display as usual, but unique to Sparks are lush backgrounds that replicates the look of paint on canvas and include vibrant, sometimes impressionistic detail. Peppered into this are occasional detours into beautiful expressionism: an early moment turns the world around lead character Kihachi into an oil painting as he experiences the wonder of electricity for the first time; a scene where deuteragonist Inako wakes up in pitch darkness is delivered in black monochrome with white outlines.

There is no question that Sparks is the best looking show this season (an extremely high bar that it nonetheless easily crosses), and that alone makes it mandatory viewing. As for its narrative... well, here I still have some questions. Sparks is based on a romantic comedy light novel, but its adaptation leans more serious, which makes its somewhat thin characters and occasional detours into rom-com hijinks a bit jarring. But its story and setting are truly unique, and while not every beat of its first episode worked for me, it's already putting down some interesting thematic material about innovation, industry, and the belief required to effect change. If the rest of the show manages to hone in on this premiere's brightest spots, it will make for a truly remarkable series. 

Chainsmoker Cat

Do you like grossout comedy? Do you want to see a show about the nastiest cat on the planet? If so, run, don't walk, to Chainsmoker Cat, where you can watch titular catgirl Yani scrounge for cigs inside trash bags, contemplate dog poop, and continually disappoint her pure-hearted younger sister. This is absolutely not a show for everyone—its first few minutes feature jokes about cigarette tar, boobs, masturbation, and diarrhea—but if that level of puerility sounds okay, you'll be pleased to know it's really funny, with quick comedic timing and out-there scenarios that rival peak Adult Swim. This is all bolstered by the show's great animation and storyboarding, which bring out unusually well-observed details in Yani's fetid apartment.

There's some interesting stuff going on beneath the surface—Yani is dealing with addiction, poverty, and likely mental illness that keep her in a perpetual downward spiral, and the premiere introduces a world full of Beastfolk like her who seem relegated to blue collar temp jobs. For now, though, this is mostly about how rancid a cat can get, and Yani's effervescent attitude keeps the tone light despite her self-inflicted pain. The show's long-term success may depend on whether it can humanize Yani and her world as much as it dunks on her, but for now, Chainsmoker Cat is a great, nasty time.

Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You

The second (and much less disgusting) show centered around cigarettes this season, Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You is about haggard salaryman Sasaki, who regularly works past midnight and takes browbeatings from his boss. His main reprieve is shopping at a 24-hour supermarket where he can find the amiable clerk Yamada and deadpan alt-girl Tamaya—who are, unbeknownst to him, the same woman. 

Sasaki treating Yamada as his after-work "pick-me-up" could easily come across as creepy or pathetic, but the show gives him enough humility, self-awareness, and genuine kindness to make him feel sympathetic instead of sketchy. Even better, Yamada-Tamaya holds all the cards in their interactions and uses those cards exclusively to troll him, pretending her alter egos are coworkers gossiping about him to each other. Despite being aesthetically modest, the show has a gentle, welcoming vibe, and the character chemistry is so cute and flirty that it can coast on that alone. Smoking isn't the most ambitious premiere this season, but it made me smile more than anything else I watched.

Kaiju Girl Caramelise

Puberty is rough on everyone, but at least most of us don't have to worry about turning into King Gidorah in front of a crush. Such is the story of Kaiju Girl Caramelise, about a dour teenager named Kuroe Akaishi whose back sprouts monstrous spines and hands turn into claws when she gets agitated. She thinks she has her lonely life perfectly sorted until her popular male-model classmate Minami starts spending lunch breaks with her and she begins to realize that, hey, sometimes boys can be hot AND nice. 

Where some rom-coms sand off their characters' edges in the pursuit of a pleasant atmosphere, Caramelise works precisely because its protagonist is so prickly. Akaishi is a rude, untrusting teenager who dresses like a warlock and never talks to classmates, the result of a lifetime of being ostracized for her condition. Yet while she first views Minami as another disingenuous kid, he's gone through pain of his own and respects the way she bluntly cuts through the polite society he now finds inescapable. Two characters finding something in each other that they themselves lack is a tried-and-true romance setup, and it's made all the better here by its genre fiction twist. Caramelise's first episode is funny, well animated, smartly written, and sure to leave a monster-sized impression on your heart.

Draw This, Then Die

Sometimes a show just comes out of nowhere to charm your pants off. Draw This, Then Die is about an imaginative young island girl named Ai who falls in love with manga in elementary school and remains so obsessed as a high schooler that she's accompanied by the make-believe tanuki Pokota. Ai's imaginary friend encourages her to be brave and kind like the protagonists she idolizes—but he himself is a character from her favorite manga, which got only a single volume before being axed. Her strict teacher Ms. Teshima may disapprove of her hobby, but when Ai finds out her favorite mangaka is releasing a new volume at a Tokyo comic convention, she can't help but sneak off to the big city to meet her idol.

Draw This, Then Die is a sweet time thanks to its portrayal of Ai as a kid who's a little naive and a little different, yet who finds solace in characters like her who push through their struggles. It's bolstered by a nostalgic aesthetic—the show's saturated colors make her island life bright and appealing, and the retro character designs make Ai feel like she could be straight out of an 80s children's classic. The premiere features some nice reflections on doujinshi culture and how manga can guide youngsters, but it's mostly just cute—my highlight of the episode was watching Ai and Pokota rhythmically bound up the stairs to her school, then look out at the ocean. Come for the good vibes, and maybe stay for the good vibes, too.