The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Let This Grieving Soul Retire! Season 2

It's the golden age for treasure hunters—adventurers hungry for wealth, fame, power, and glory, who risk their lives in treasure vaults throughout the world.

“Let's become treasure hunters.”

Krai and his childhood friends swore to become the greatest of them all, but that dream should have died the day Krai realized he wasn't cut out for the job! Yet expectations continue to mount, right along with Krai's fear for his life. While his childhood friends climb closer toward their dream, this grieving soul has one simple wish: to pack it all in and retire!

Let This Grieving Soul Retire! Season 2 is based on a light novel series by Tsukikage and Chyko. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I mean, it Ain't Bad™. The Grieving Souls are reintroduced well enough; there's a joke involving a dude's 'fro that I laughed at, the animation is competent for this type of show, and I kind of like the color scheme here (seriously, the oranges and reds in this sunset-drenched town are magnificent). And hey, props for the show saying that slavery is bad, and that cruel slaveowners need their proper comeuppance! It's crazy how it's 2025 and we still have to give props to anime that actually do that, but whatever, I'll take what I can get here. Still, though, I feel whatever positives I'm giving the show here feel a bit fished out here. The start of Let This Grieving Soul Retire!'s new season isn't mediocre by any stretch of the imagination. It's not even meh. But something about the pacing just irks me.

Like a good chunk of Grieving Soul, much of this new episode is told through flashbacks, focusing on the origin story of the adorable, girly simp of the gang, Tino. A group of child slaveowners tries to kidnap her in the town alleyway, only for Krai and the Souls to intervene to save her. The Souls then continue to give the slave owners the ol' one-two-buckle-my-shoe in the flashback sequence, interspersed with Tino reminiscing about the memory in the present. The episode cuts between the past and present, giving it an unnecessarily choppy feel. Not that I'm against cutting back and forth between two time periods or stories like that—The Godfather Part II is the masterclass example of the former, and Liz and the Blue Bird the latter. But the pacing of a Walter Murch editing job, Grieving Souls is not. The cuts here don't really add to much, and don't change the fact that I'm still watching fantasy that seems too straightforward for my tastes.

That being said, I'm not sure if I'd be smitten by this episode if it went for a more traditional pacing. I'm not invested in how Krai continues to lounge around in the back so the rest of the Grieving Souls can do all the heavy lifting. I get that this is the entire point of his character and thus the show itself, but I wish there were more dimension to his character than being a weak yet still conniving enough group leader. I wish the same for the other characters—it's a tinge bit adorable to see Tino fawn over her dear leader, and even better that we get to understand why she does. And yet, I can't help but feel that this is the most interesting she'll be. None of the characters and moments in season one really stuck out for me, and I'm not sure they will this season.

I'll give this new episode credit where credit is due: I liked how low-key it was. Nothing here is too actiony, and there are no bad guys who need their asses kicked (yet). It's just a romp where scoops of humor are dalloped here and there—I liked how Krai's illusion magic has him donning a big ol' head that attracts more attention than warranted, as I did the bit where Tino's personality shifted into something more vicious after putting on the mask from last season (seriously, is there a fanfic writer reading this that can do a Grieving Souls write-up a la Jim Carrey's The Mask?). The bit where a giant rabbit is chasing around Tino is the same “cute anime girl being chased by giant monster thing” I've seen done before, although I still appreciate the show throwing it in here for some more comedic zing. And it's good that the anime decided to bring back the Grieving Souls' rival gang for consistency's sake instead of coming up with a new villain.

All of these things I liked. I didn't love 'em though. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! is a fine comedy-adventure-fantasy series for sure, but certain aspects prevent me from sinking my teeth into it. The need for flashbacks from the last episode has been dropped this time around, although the pacing still doesn't feel as smooth as it could be. It goes from examining a giant hole in the desert that a golem dug up just a few days prior*, to a subplot about sand rabbits (which honestly sounds like the name of a crust punk band that'd open up for Leftover Crack), then to Krai comedically avoiding confrontation with the rival gang, and then finally having to prepare for a gathering of high-ranked knights, hunters, and nobles. I feel there are enough ideas to make two, maybe even three, episodes of anime. One episode alone makes it all feel too tightly crammed here.

I don't want to antagonize this series too much. There is enough substance here to keep audiences invested. The story is moving forward the way it should, the balance between comedy and fantasy action works well enough, and Tino is delightful to watch, even if she's not the main character. It's hard to fault folk for their continued investment in this series. I'm just not sure that this is the show for me.

* - Random note, and this may or may not be a valid complaint. BUT! How in the hell did that golem dig that hole while still finding time to resurface all of its edges with bricks? Is he a master of carpentry or something?

When it comes to season premieres of ongoing series, they usually start one of three ways: 1) jump right into the next arc, 2) continue plodding along with little-to-no fanfare, or 3) reintroduce the cast with a one-off adventure. This episode is option three, but with a twist. Rather than an ultimately meaningless adventure set in the present, this episode provides a vital piece of backstory: the first meeting between Tino and the Grieving Souls.

Thus, this episode allows us to get to know Tino before her obsession took hold—before she saw Krai as an omnipotent, god-like savior and before Liz's training began to warp her perception of the world. It also gives us a bit more time with the members of the party who haven't appeared in the present-day storyline yet—namely Luke, Lucia, and Ansem—and gives us a taste of what they can do by showing how crazily strong they were half a decade ago.

Overall, this episode is a good example of what to expect from the series as it follows the usual pattern. Krai stumbles through a complex and/or dangerous situation, his friends end up defeating whatever evil they encounter, and he emerges looking like a mastermind who has manipulated everything and everyone to achieve the perfect resolution.

However, where this episode truly succeeds is in its low-key humor. The jokes about the masks really got me. Revealing that the party is literally blind while wearing them redefines a ton of scenes from the first season—and makes our heroes seem even more powerful. That those masks were bought solely for the reason they look cool (despite basically bankrupting the party) is also a good gag—but not as good as the revelation that they are bulletproof because they are made of top-tier materials (hence their cost).

And then there is the big joke of the episode. To quote the late, great Raúl Juliá:

“For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday.”

In the same vein, for Tino, the day she met Krai was the defining moment of her entire life. But for Krai, it was just another day of him meandering through life with no real plan other than trying to slack off. Krai doesn't even remember the event until hearing Tino describe it at length to anyone who will listen (and many who don't want to).

And, like Bison, he doesn't really even care—either about the events in general or forgetting in the first place. Instead, he thinks about how to use the now much stronger Tino for his own plans—namely, using her as a bodyguard while he adds to his massive relic collection.

All in all, this episode is more of the same—and I mean that in the best way. If you watched the first season and enjoyed it, you'll enjoy this episode too. I know I did.

One of the main reasons that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! works so well is the simple fact that pretty much everyone in the story is as broken as Krai in one way or another. Liz is selfish to an astounding degree and has a hair-trigger temper. Sitri, meanwhile, is completely amoral—far worse than the villains of the story so far. Even poor Tino is ruined by her belief that Krai is some kind of divine creature worthy of worship.

So while Krai is lazy and disinterested in the world around him, he's often the least destructive of the main characters. The trick just happens to be that the world (including his unstable friends) reacts to him as if he is hyper-competent—as if every move he makes has a hidden meaning and long-reaching implications.

This episode is a prime example of that. Krai simply wants to sit around and play with his new relic. He doesn't want to do clerical work, go to royal parties, accept mission requests, tackle problems in the criminal underworld, or deal with the repercussions of his past actions. So he does what he usually does: he runs away. Of course, while “going on vacation” is exactly what he intends to do, no one—not even his close friends—believes him. They all see it as a euphemism at best and one of his notorious trials at worst.

Thus, in just this episode, his actions have caused a major domino effect, resulting in both an underworld purge and a power vacuum in the Capitol (as several top-ranked adventurers have left with him or are chasing him). Or, to put it another way, everything has been set up for just the kind of chaotic, comedic adventure that this series does so well. I'm here for it.

A 4:3 flashback showing us how Tino got to meet her beloved Grieving Souls is a clever way to kick off this new batch of episodes. It's a great way to ease us back into the universe of this show. Plus, by now, I—like plenty of other viewers, I'm sure—have been really curious if she has anything in particular that's driving her to be so zealous about Krai's “strength” in particular, and it comes off as the sort of thing that's rooted in a personal experience. So, as a choice for a storyline in this first episode, this is an excellent choice!

My favorite aspect of it, though, is, well, the aspect ratio—that the flashback segments were in 4:3. This is only a flashback five years in the past, so I guess there's something to be said about how that makes it come off like it's way longer, but I thought it was a cute detail all the same. It tickled my zillennial heart. Charming little things like this have always been a strength of Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, even in its first season (the narrator springs to mind), so I'm all the happier to see something like that in this first episode.

Still, even taking into account how adorable I think the changing aspect ratio of the flashback segments is, this still made for a good episode—a nice, bite-sized storyline of a less-experienced-but-still-pretty-powerful Grieving Souls helping out a young Tino. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has generally favored storylines that last multiple episodes up until now, so it's refreshing to get one that's quicker, and especially one that tells us so much about our main cast of characters (Tino especially). It's short, it's sweet, it's to the point. I imagine that, especially if I were binging this show, an episode like this one now and again would feel like a good checkpoint.

This is all to say that, especially as the first episode of a new batch, this one works pretty well. It's not doing anything amazingly (save for the fun detail of the aspect ratio), but what it's doing, it's doing well—and that's enough for me to say that I enjoyed this episode. Admittedly, the first season of this show—while I didn't dislike it per se, I also never really felt wowed by it either. I was quite surprised to find that I actually ended up liking this episode. It was a surprisingly enjoyable start for a show that I've otherwise generally found pretty middling up until now. If this continues, I might become a fan by the end of the season.

It's almost impressive how Grieving Soul can make 20 minutes pass without actually progressing its story much, if at all. In all that time, the only thing of meaningful substance that happened is that Krai and co. have decided to go out of town, ostensibly on a vacation. And also, for varying reasons, a lot of other people are going to—whether part of Krai's group directly, or not. That's it. That's basically all that happened. And is my clock lying to me—has it really taken the 20-minute entirety of the episode to accomplish that? Well, apparently so.

This slow-moving, mostly uneventful episode is disappointing in general, but especially so fresh off the heels of the shockingly good previous episode. Alas, I guess it wasn't meant to last. But then again, last week's episode was unusually good, and this one feels much more in line with the rest of the series, which often struggles with its pacing. So in that way, it's not so strange after all.

But speaking of being strange, it needs to be said: I don't like the way Krai eats cake. Did you catch the way he was eating his cake? It's okay if you didn't—I understand. When cake is on-screen, even animated cake, I have a hard time remembering to look at other details, too, like how the cake is being eaten. It's really easy to get lost in the cake of it all, so I get it. So, just in case, the image I have attached sums it up. My guy really took the whole piece—the entire piece—with his fork, and ate it like the King Size Ultra Krabby Supreme with the works, double batter fry, on a stick. This is unnatural and not suitable for even the strongest human eye. I don't like the way he eats cake.

But getting back on track: pacing has been one of my bigger gripes with Grieving Soul overall thus far, and episodes like this are testament as to why that is. The story is only barely crawling along. Still, since Krai and co. are going on vacation, it makes a beach episode feel imminent, and I'm sure that's got plenty of people excited to keep watching. As for me, between this and the first episode, I'm feeling pretty “meh” on these early new episodes of Grieving Soul. We got one good episode and one uneventful episode. It could be much worse, but it could be much better, too.