The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon Season 2

Boxxo is still stuck in this new world as a vending machine, but that's okay. His quick thinking and ability to dispense useful items to his allies have proven his utility and courage many times over. Now that he's become a hero in the eyes of his allies, Boxxo and the gang continue to venture the dungeon he's been confined to in the hopes of taking out the menacing Demon Lord and his henchmen.

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon Season 2 is based on the light novel series by author Hirukuma and illustrator Yūki Hagure. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

We resume where we left off in the last episode, with Boxxo and pals rushing back to their home village following the Demon Lord's warning that, with the strongest warriors all stuck in the Dead's Lament Stratum, no one could stop his armies from wreaking havoc. True to the Demon Lord's word, the village is wrecked, buildings are crumbling, many people seem to have died (though no named characters, from the looks of it), and the survivors are holed up in one barricaded building. Despite its daft premise, Reborn as a Vending Machine does seem to feature real stakes for its characters. Not that I expect any of them to face personal tragedy any time soon, the destruction of their village is still fairly dramatic!

Lammis and Boxxo make a great team, as he produces vast quantities of foodstuffs for the hungry, traumatized villagers, while she carries him around and helps distribute them. There's nothing like ice cream to dispel the fog of war! When she's able to engage full berserker mode against the monsters later on, she's all for pushing past her obvious fatigue, and it takes Boxxo speaking her name for the first time to stop her overdoing it. Boxxo can speak now, sort of! By chopping up the individual syllables of his stock vending machine phrases, he can Frankenstein together some new words, though he's not able to use every possible sound, nor can he make it sound fluent. Nonetheless, it's progress! I fully expect him to be performing fully original sonnets in iambic pentameter by the end of the season.

In terms of vending machine utility, Boxxo reprises a few old favorites – the Mentos-fueled cola cannons return, plus he correctly intuits the invading lizard people army are cold-blooded, so he reverts to last week's massive ice dispenser, this time using his telekinesis to fashion spinning ice projectiles of doom. Shame that it almost completely exhausts his money supply. As overpowered as Boxxo is, he's still limited by his nature as a vending machine. If cash don't go in, the product don't come out. Not even Director Bear has enough gold reserves to keep Boxxo in full combat mode. I like that Boxxo has limitations, as it means further clever twists will be needed to overcome them. That's probably the main strength of this story: Boxxo using his mind and transformation skills to solve problems in pleasingly novel ways. Though perhaps the solution this time will arise from somewhere else, considering little rich girl Suori's smug smile at the end. What the consequences for Boxxo might be remain to be seen, though.

Reborn as a Vending Machine maintains its consistency as a silly, fun, and at times clever show. Its animation is mostly rudimentary and music functional, the setting is generic, and the storyline is simple, but its biggest strength is in Boxxo himself, a unique protagonist who makes the show worth watching from week to week.

I wonder if (and perhaps even hope that) we've achieved End Stage Isekai with the proliferation of bizarre iterations on the “reincarnated in another world as something else” trope. First came villainesses, slimes, and spiders, then came inanimate objects like swords or magic wands, and now we're at ASMR microphones and vending machines. I'm almost certain there's a webnovel featuring someone reincarnated as women's underwear but I'm too scared to look.

Against all odds, the first season of webnovel adaptation Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon was a solid fantasy show that made the most of its absurd premise with genuine imagination and an infectious sense of fun. I still can't quite believe I watched the whole thing, but I welcome this second season of our offbeat vending machine hero Boxxo's strange adventures.

We pick up shortly after the end of the first season in the aftermath of Boxxo and friends' battle against the Netherlord, where Boxxo saved the day, reviving his allies' stopped hearts by dispensing an AED machine. He has subsequently developed the power of telekinesis, which, when combined with his ability to transform into any kind of vending machine, and generate impregnable forcefields, means he's now pretty overpowered. Hence the reason that Captain Kerioyl of the renowned adventurer party “Menagerie of Fools” keeps trying to recruit him, along with the super-strong genki-girl Lammis and her childhood friend Hulemy, a magic item engineer.

Boxxo's not without his limitations – while he's great at producing a near-infinite number of amazing food and drink products – he's essentially the best ever party support member – he's still unable to converse freely, using stock vending machine phrases like “hello there” in place of other words, like “yes.” Lammis seems to understand him well enough though, and carrying his heavy metal body around helps her to moderate her ridiculous strength, arising from her “Blessing of Might.”

Most of this episode focuses on Director Bear – an actual bear with a pleasingly literal name – building a party to take a second stab at defeating the Netherlord, who is the Demon Lord's minion (or left arm, as it turns out). They travel to the skeleton-filled “Dead's Lament Stratum” for a big fight, with all of the strongest warriors accompanying them. So far, so generic fantasy; we've seen this all a million times before.

Thankfully, this battle features further creative use of Boxxo's powers, with intelligent iterations on skills we already know he possesses, and a fun new transformation into the 18-meter tall largest vending machine in Japanese society, a maritime ice dispenser! The show knows its premise is utterly absurd, and leans right into it. Reborn as a Vending Machine will never win awards for flashy animation or particularly sharp scriptwriting, but the sheer audacity of Boxxo's battle strategies, combined with a cute cast of very sweet characters, means this is a daft show I'm happy to follow for a second season of whimsically odd adventures.

Things have never looked worse for our heroes. While they were out fighting the Demon Lord's lackey, the monsters from across the dungeon were attacking the towns, and a lot of people were dead. While the return of the expeditionary force is a welcome relief, much of the towns' population has been killed with the guild building as the last stronghold.

This is one of those episodes that would work better as a two-parter. This is a new situation for our heroes and they are under substantial mental stress. Exploring it all takes time—especially when characters are working to overcome deeply ingrained trauma. Lammis is the clearest example of this.

At first, she is distracted by wondering if her best townie friend survived or not—and is trying to get back into the fight so as not to think about it. Luckily both Boxxo and the guild master see right through her and know that fighting while distracted could get her killed. Thus, she is left to hand out food and drinks to the beleaguered civilians. But before she can work through her feelings, it's revealed her friend is alive and was simply upstairs.

Just as that emotionally taxing problem is solved, another appears. Lammis is caught up in the trauma of what happened to her village when she was young. Driven by a need to atone for her previous helplessness, she pushes herself past her limits. Yet, this too is overcome in a quick fashion by a few surprising words from Boxxo and a good nap. Worse still, both of these big emotional moments take place over the first nine-and-a-half minutes of the episode. It's way too fast and they lose a ton of impact because of it.

The rest of the episode, however, is much better. It reinforces the limits placed upon Boxxo in this world to mitigate how powerful he has become. Moreover, we get to spend a bit of time on his newfound ability to speak—what the rules are and what his continued shortcomings are. It makes me marvel at how much work the original author had to do to write what sentences Boxxo could say and how they'd come out. Likewise, the translator of this episode had their work cut out for them not only understanding what Boxxo had to say but also writing his words in a way that's fragmented-yet-understandable—just like in the original Japanese.

This is a good episode but one that could have been much better with some more runtime spent on Lammis' emotional struggles.

My favorite thing about this series is that, on paper, it looks like a joke. People in isekai anime have been reincarnated into heroes, villainesses, side characters, and even magic swords. However, this anime's concept seems designed to have the most useless reincarnation ever: being reborn as a vending machine. Our hero can't talk (beyond a few set phrases), can't move, and is a literal metal box. Yet, somehow by creatively utilizing his one true ability—to turn into different types of vending machine-esque machines—he can be not only a valuable member to his party, but the star of it.

Season 2 starts right after the end of the first season. The Demon Lord's general is mucking about in the dungeon labyrinth, and it's up to our heroes to stop him. For the most part, this episode is designed to reintroduce us to both the main and extended cast. This means a lot of looping characters back in who were only important for a single episode in the first season, and revealing they are much more than they appeared to be. We also get a scene or two between Boxxo and his two closest companions, Lammis and Hulemy, to remind us of the deeper connection between them.

As for the big battle, it follows the standard formula set up by this series—i.e., that Boxxo defeats the monster they are fighting each episode by turning into a new type of vending machine. However, that's not all there is to it. While the world's largest ice machine dishes out the biggest amount of damage, Boxxo uses several past vending machine abilities in concert to not only set up the attack but also land the final blow afterward. What can I say? I'm always a fan of seeing continuity used as a weapon.

Presentation-wise, the series remains mid-level in its animation quality. It doesn't look bad, but neither will it be winning any awards. The voices, however, are great, and Boxxo, Lammis, and Hulemy carry the show effortlessly.

All in all, this episode does what it sets out to do: reintroduce our heroes and what they can do while also introducing us to the overarching threat of the season. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it is a solid way to start season 2.

I'll admit that sometimes I can be quick to weigh out the cons before the pros, so when I saw that this episode's opening moments had our gang mosey back into town towards less exciting adventures, I felt mildly disappointed that things wouldn't continue the same frenzied momentum its previous episode ended on. Had I witnessed what was just a flash in the pan?

Then again, I shouldn't have been surprised. It's not exactly in Vending Machine's repertoire to make hardboiled action part of its repertoire. Neither is it the bulk of this episode for that matter, and while there are a few moments where more action could have been injected into it, I'm still mostly satisfied with what I saw.

Probably the best we got from this episode is how Boxxo is finding new ways to communicate with people. Because he could only properly communicate with Lammis, the relationship Boxxo had with other characters was limited—although I'm certain that was the point. Now that he's breaking free of his usual vending machine limitations (via breaking apart the letters in his set phrases and using them individually) there are more opportunities to have meaningful relationships with the world surrounding him. There's a conversation that he has with Hulemy—and seeing how I personally felt that she was just, well, there in season one, I would like to see if his finally being able to talk helps the two reach new heights in their relationship. Random note, but speaking of dialogue, the joke where Lammis forces Boxxo to have a seat, only for him to say that he can't because he's a vending machine (and therefore always sitting) got me pretty good.

Lammis gets some development too. When monsters attack the town this episode takes place in, we're given a flashback from long ago when Lammis and Hulemy were forced to flee their village after monsters ransacked it. This painful memory is what gives Lammis the motivation to take arms against this new wave of monsters. Tragic backstories are often a dime-a-dozen thing to have in fiction, but again, this is a show about a vending machine. I'm not exactly expecting a gripping plot here, so if the show can work this cliche into giving Lammis even the teeniest more depth, then it's all the better.

That being said, the lack of action is still there, and while I can easily forgive it, I can't ignore it either. The animation when the monster horde attacks is stilted—and even though we see the impact of their destruction, the artistic restraint here makes it so that we can't really feel the danger. When Boxxo comes in to save the day through Mentos'd coke bottles and spraying ice everywhere, he realizes that it depletes a lot of his energy to do so. It could have served as a little dent in his plot armor—maybe raised the stakes a little bit more—if he hadn't been victorious. But it's the end of the episode, so of course he does. Again, I'd be lying if I said that I found this ending to be lacking, although I did wish for something more. No matter. There's still enough going on here to build intrigue for the next episode—and at the end of the day, that's what counts.

I always felt that I had underestimated this show. The show's premise had me thinking I was going to watch something overtly wacky, but thanks to its very grounded usage, Vending Machine's first season ended up being both more light-hearted and serious than I anticipated. The start of Vending Machine's new season has proven to me that I continue to underestimate it, especially since it arrives at an endpoint that is surprisingly dramatic, and obviously all the better for it.

Being the fun little isekai romp that Vending Machine is, the new episode's first half does a wonderful job of reintroducing its world and characters. What's best is that the fight against the Netherlord that occupied the first season's final moments now seems to be a more focused goal here at the start. Even if it's a simple one, I'm hoping this gives the plot more of a focal point, since I felt that Vending Machine's first season was a little bit meandering at times. Things remain merry even when the Boxxo, Lammis, and the rest of the crew reach the turf of the Netherlord, and I admire how the soundtrack remains upbeat even as the mise en scene becomes brooding (off-topic but speaking of the soundtrack, I gotta say that OP is a bop, that guitar tone is so crunchy). Some nicely done fights enter the fray and build up to a moment I dare not say, but it was quite explosive, all things considered.

I still feel like I've spoiled quite a bit here, but I'm sure that nobody watching this episode will be terribly surprised by how it plays out. Admittedly, all of the flaws from the last season are still here; the isekai fantasy is very cut and dry as always, and Boxxo's ability to change form and provide the right items at the right time is a little too convenient. Still, I applaud the show for remaining consistent and continuing to defy my expectations regardless, and I'm intrigued to see what happens next.