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The story
The popularity rankings for the 2025 summer anime season are in, and as the summer broadcast cour (three-month season) wraps up, sequels to “naro-kei” hits — a term for series originating from the web-novel site Shousetsuka ni Narou (“Let’s Become a Novelist”), usually isekai/reincarnation power-fantasy stories — swept the top spots: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Tensura), and Re:Zero. On 5ch’s Livegalileo (general live-commentary) board, posters traded barbs like “They said summer was a bumper crop, but really it was just naro-kei that was a bumper crop,” and expressed shock that Mushoku Tensei’s beloved “diary episode” (日記回), a fan-favorite emotionally charged episode, didn’t even land #1 on Amazon Prime’s internal rankings. Meanwhile, one-off and brand-new titles — including Yani Neko, Juukishi, and the Ghost in the Shell remake — got roundly panned, setting up a contrast between strong sequels and struggling newcomers.
What people said
You're leaning on episode 1 way too hard.
Season 2… doesn't look like it's happening.
Still miles better than Yani Neko or whatever, though.
Having Luce in it makes it way more watchable than Yani.
Maybe it's just because the lead's voice actor is good-looking?
Onishi going full rage mode was the most entertaining thing all season
Way better than Tenmaku or Lala
The back half was great. This is the level of commitment I want from a revenge story.
Loved that they had him cut down civilians on the way to his revenge target.
Where, exactly?
Well, it WAS a bumper crop — for naro-kei.
That was Rudeus bringing it on himself, but I still think Eris was pretty bad too
Eris never actually explaining herself properly is on her too
Feels like violence is the only way she knows how to communicate
Amazon Prime: the realm where even Mushoku Tensei's diary episode can't hit #1
The viewer base is aging 😭
Grandpa's up next 👴
The streaming release is too delayed
Needs to be simulcast fastest
I mean, this one's a Prime exclusive, so…
And Nearisu's theme song is no good
Doesn't look like "Chii-Fuyo" (fan nickname, exact title unclear) will even make it to the hangure [quasi-organized-crime gang] arc anyway
About the only thing people talked about was "Old-deus" from Mushoku Tensei [a jab nickname mashing up "aged" with Rudeus's name]
What about Julius's stiff, janky running animation?
Forgettable shows, easily worse than naro-kei
I mean, doing Ghost in the Shell again at this point, though…
Couldn't get over the Major being voiced by Sakamoto
For some reason it kept dragging scenes out like that Dragon Ball "once he reaches his perfect form" copypasta, and it cut the fun in half
I think normal pacing would've made it way better
Whatever happened to Iron Wok Jan?
The planned 2-cour season got cut down to just 1 cour [cour = a ~3-month anime broadcast season]
Though obviously it can't top season 1
The king of naro-kei is Tensura, actually
It's like this: the protagonist is such trash that women hate him, so guys in the same boat rally behind him
FYI, Narou's overall ranking #1 is actually "Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill" 🥺
"Toncooking" [fan abbreviation], lol — such a shamelessly trashy naro-kei title
Hold on, wasn't Rimuru naked too?
Unlike Julius, Ram's battle animation was actually solid — cracked me up
Why is that
It's for the pachinko-machine cutscenes [pachinko = Japan's pinball-slot gambling parlors, which license flashy anime tie-in animations]
The twist that the little brother has the cutest face of all
Same here
Already loved the source manga, but getting voices and atmosphere in the anime made it even better
Background and Talking Points
This season’s regulars at the top were sequels to already-established hits — Mushoku Tensei, Tensura, and Re:Zero — all “naro-kei” series with built-in fanbases from their source material. The thread split mainly on two points. First, rankings from streaming services like Amazon Prime aren’t official viewership or sales data — they’re just a reference metric reflecting that particular service’s users’ viewing and rating habits. It’s not unusual for a well-regarded show to sit low on such a ranking, so the reaction to Mushoku Tensei’s fan-favorite episode missing #1 needs to be read as a quirk of this specific metric rather than a verdict on the show. Second, on the question of “why are naro-kei shows so strong,” some posters took a cynical view of protagonists who get validated by the opposite sex through power or status, while others pointed out more soberly that for sequels, the built-in name recognition of the source material — not the genre itself — is the main driver of their strength. It’s also worth noting that reviews were broadly harsh toward one-off new titles this season, which is the backdrop against which the sequels’ dominance should be read.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Livegalileo board) thread “[Sad News] Summer anime ends up dominated by naro-kei after all lol.”
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