The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Tales of Wedding Rings II

Satou is the Ring King: a legendary hero who wields a set of powerful, elemental rings, obtained by marrying their respective Ring Princesses. After returning from our world to this world to defeat the recently revived Abyss King, Ring King Satō and his group of adventurers meet up with his beloved Hime's little sister, who has some magic of her own up her sleeve.

Tales of Wedding Rings II is based on the manga series by Maybe. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I'll be honest, y'all, I didn't have high expectations going into this show. How could I when Tales of Wedding Rings' first season felt like “but we have anime Lord of the Rings at home” with dumb hentai mish-mashed in between? But holy good mother of Haruhi up above, was this new episode ever so...bland. It feels more like a continuation of the first season rather than a fresh new start. You could have snuck this episode in at the end of season one and nobody would have noticed a difference.

The story starts with Satō, Hime, and the rest of the harem meeting Hime's little sister Morion after the Abyss King has been revived. Fine, but couldn't we have started with knowing what happened with the Abyss King after he was revived, especially since the existential threat of him coming back to life is the entire point of the series? It would have been more effective to see him wreak havoc on the world to set the tone, then reintroduce our main cast as they waltzed their way into more adventuring. It almost feels like the show suddenly forgot that he was even a thing to begin with. Certainly Satō forgot too, because he (and I'm not kidding) actually asks who the Abyss King even is towards the very end of the episode. Is this guy dense or something? Why wasn't this question asked at the start? He's been trying to stop this dude from fucking up their shit for thirteen straight episodes now. It'd be like if the Philadelphia Eagles didn't know who Patrick Mahomes was. “Are we supposed to tackle this dude? What team is he even on? Is he the one dating Taylor Swift?”

But never mind that, because it turns out that spicy anime NSFW-ness is on the menu! And even more of it than the first few episodes of season one had combined! And along with nudity, this episode has no shortage of phallic symbols, from long magical rods to a giant white tower that stands ever so erect against the world's blue skies. The show doubles down so hard on the innuendo that it has the attitude of a twelve-year-old who thinks he's cool because he drew dicks all over his math homework.

Wedding Rings doesn't outright start as flaming hot garbage right off the bat. I do really enjoy the weird synth-y background music that kickstarts this episode. And the art style is nice for what it is, although I wish the animation were better. Two fight scenes occur across this episode's twenty-plus-minute span, and they are the PowerPoint slideshow-style animation you'd expect from a series like this. The character designs aren't original at all, but more than seeing another simulacra'd Rei Ayanami, I really, really wish Hime didn't look like Hinata from A Place Further Than the Universe here. All it does is make me wish I were watching Universe for the fourth time. But alas.

You know you're in for some more mid when the episode starts with a joke involving a character locking herself away in her room. Truth be told, she was actually outside of it the entire time, but would you blame her if that wasn't the case? This episode is so dull that I wouldn't want to be caught dead here either.

This second episode of Wedding Rings is more expository than the first, with our adventurers traveling down the passages of a mysterious, ancient library to learn more about the Abyss King. However, there are a few instances of fan service and NSFWness thrown into the mix (especially towards the end, in a plot point so nonsensical that it's baffling), the episode mostly exchanges the horny for the expository. Because Wedding Rings hasn't ripped off Lord of the Rings enough, this episode decides to copy the opening from Fellowship of the Ring via flashback sequences detailing the Abyss King's rise and fall. Except whereas in Fellowship you see Sauron's destructive force as he and his legion razes through army after army, the Abyss King's power is felt through the terrifying power of...[checks notes]... a static image of his demon army frozen in place, followed by a sequence where he might as well have used a dark light to turn an entire town purple. Fear his wrath and terror, people!

Some visual references to Utena are there to gawk at, as well as a few attempts at humor, too, none of them landing. Along with the aforementioned “character locked in her room except not really” bit, there's also a moment where one of Satou's ladies tries hitting on old man Gand—I mean Alabaster—and it just comes out of nowhere and is unnecessary. There's one moment where we see a magical, severed hand, and apparently it's supposed to be the virtuous side of the original Ring King before he went mad (more on that in a bit). Now, I'm the farthest thing from being the next Bill Hicks, and I've got loads of bad jokes that go nowhere myself. Trust me on this, I have the receipts to prove it. But even I thought “C'mon, this virtuous side of the original Ring King can't lend Sato...a hand here?” Groaner of a joke? Absolutely. But it's still better than anything you'll find here.

Towards the episode's end, we learn that the original Ring King, who defeated the Abyss King, became so corrupt by his own power and lust that his harem of princesses ended up having to slay him. But it also means that Satou, as the new Ring King, might have to meet the same end should he succeed in his mission. It's an interesting concept for sure, and I would have loved to see Satou try to escape this fate had I been more invested in what's going on. But I'm just not.

I have a certain respect for Tales of Wedding Rings. It's a show that knows exactly what it wants to do and what it wants to be, and commits to doing exactly that. It feels no shyness, no embarrassment, no cringe, no need to be deeper than it is—nothing. It's perfectly content to be a bland, but relentlessly horny fantasy series that can boob with the breast of them. And in that regard, this first episode of season 2 is no different. In fact, if anything, it somehow got even more well-endowed.

Now that all the Ring Princesses are assembled, this episode lays out that this season is going to be more focused on their getting stronger, so they can be ready for an eventual showdown with the mysterious Abyss King. And to get stronger, they need to deepen their bonds. Chaos is bound to ensue, and I have little doubt that as the season goes on, we're going to see more than our fair share of antics as the Princesses try to get closer to Satou—and, hopefully, each other as well.

If you're watching this show for a critical mass of critical masses, I have great news: this episode is precisely what you're looking for. However, as always, this show struggles with coming up with an engaging story. The plot for Tales of Wedding Rings has always come off as a series of very flimsy excuses to manufacture a harem for the 10 millionth Just Some Guy. And to be fair, the shamelessness of it all is the best thing this show has going for it, so that's not entirely a bad thing. It's always so much better when an anime knows what it wants to be and goes for it. However, if you were hoping to see this show's weakest assets receive some improvement, alas, there's no sign of that here.

All in all, this is an okay episode. For better or for worse, it's pretty consistent with the first season in both its strengths (commitment to being horny) and weaknesses (story). So, I doubt this first episode will convince someone to reconsider if they didn't care for the first season. However, I also don't think it wants to. The impression it leaves me is that, as ever, it's perfectly happy just to keep doing what it's been doing—which is something people who liked the previous batch of episodes will probably be glad to see.

I already mentioned last week how I think this show is at its strongest when it's just letting itself be what it so clearly wants to be: an unabashedly horny show first and a fantasy series second. And exposition-heavy episodes like this one are a testament as to why that is. In its best moments, the story ranges from being generic and underdeveloped. At its worst, it's sleep-inducingly boring. And this week's episode landed somewhere in the middle of that.

In an anime which, up until now, has ceded only a bare minimal amount of time and energy to its story and worldbuilding, that's more or less all this episode was. To Tales of Wedding Rings' credit, it's very obviously trying to give itself some much-needed oomph—especially in the writing department—by doing this. The only issue is that it just can't scrape any good story out of the white bread fantasy world it's created. This darker angle this new episode introduces to Wedding Rings just isn't working for a show like it, which shines its brightest when it's not taking things too seriously. That being said, if this anime wanted to tell a more dramatic story, it sounds like the experiences of the previous Ring Princesses are way more interesting than whatever nonsense we got right now.

Still, even if I think the execution could've been a lot better, I'm glad that Wedding Rings is finally offering us at least some substantial information about the previous Ring King, who's only been vaguely discussed up until now despite his importance. It's odd: it simultaneously feels like something that's been pretty overdue, yet at the same time, there's been so little meaningful attention to the overarching story—which is super uninspired anyways—that I feel like I've only barely noticed the absence of so much-needed context about what's going on.

The only highlight to be found in this episode was its last few minutes, when we get a very transparently manufactured situation for Satou to if-you-see-kay his wives. Whether or not he actually will is still a bit up in the air, but still. As I've already said, when this series is just leaning into where its horny interests so obviously lie, it's so much better off, and it gives it some charm. But alas, it's still not enough charm for me to find it in myself to look forward to more episodes of this show—especially if we're in for more mostly-unnecessary, exposition-heavy episodes like the one we got this week.