The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

A Certain Dark Item

In western Tokyo, there is a massive "academy city." In this city, where approximately 80% of residents are students, a special curriculum for developing psychic abilities is in place, and students' abilities are evaluated on a six-level scale from Level 0 to Level 5. Behind this tranquility lies a "dark side" organization that undertakes dirty work never revealed to the public. "ITEM" - an elite unit composed of four girls. Saiai Kinuhata, who can freely manipulate nitrogen to provide an impenetrable defense. Frenda Seivelun, who uses explosives and traps to toy with the battlefield. Rikō Takitsubo, who can read and track the faint powers emitted by ability users. Shizuri Mugino, one of only seven Level 5s in Academy City. Then, a fifth girl appears before them. Their encounter with her leads the "items" into a new darkness.

A Certain Dark Item is based on the Toaru Anbu no Item light novel series by author Kazuma Kamachi and illustrator Nilitsu. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

One of my lingering regrets when it comes to being a life-long anime fan is the fact that I've never been able to get into A Certain Magical Index—though not for lack of trying. I've watched the first arc or two but it just didn't capture me and I dropped it. And because I like to watch series from the beginning, this means I've also never seen any of A Certain Scientific Railgun, which I'm led to believe is the best of the series. However, oddly, for work a few years back, I watched and reviewed A Certain Scientific Accelerator—which I actually enjoyed a fair bit.

This all leaves me in an odd place when it comes to A Certain Dark Item. I know a fair bit about the setting—the city, the esper rankings, and the “dark side.” I can also recognize many of the staple characters, like in the cameo with Mikoto and Misaki (though I had to look up the latter's name). However, I don't actually know the story. So in this episode, every time a past event was mentioned, I was left wondering if I was already supposed to know about it or if it was something completely new to this series. But I suppose that's the nature of the beast coming into any spin-off series without seeing the original first.

That said, I think this episode gives a fair introduction to this world even to the completely uninitiated. Simply put, within Academy City, you can do all the mad science you want as long as you don't get caught. Once it looks like you're about to endanger the city—be that physically or by damaging its reputation—a superhuman death squad is sent out to take your head.

In this case, said death squad happens to be a group of high school girls. To them, this is just a part-time job. Some, like Shizuri, the team's leader and powerhouse, is fine doing the bare minimum—the “kill 'em all and let god sort them out” approach. The rest are a bit more balanced—i.e., kill who needs killing but save who you can.

The team also has a cool mix of interesting powers. From controlling nitrogen (and using it to create an unbreakable barrier) to straight up making an electron laser, there's a lot of fun/silly pseudoscience creativity on display here. Even the team member who lacks powers makes up for it with the ability to make bombs—and do a killer 5-star frog splash.

If nothing else, I came out of this premiere entertained—and that's the most important thing. The show is well-animated and is just oozing that kind of over-the-top camp that I enjoy from time to time. I'm genuinely excited to see where things go next week.

I have barely watched any of the Index series, so I'm happy that I was able to follow the story of this premiere outside of the occasional reference or cameo. I'm not going to give the show any criticism regarding it being part of a larger franchise. But what I will criticize the show for is its sense of priorities. I just watched a group of girls take down an evil research facility that was experimenting on children and yet I could barely muster up enough emotion to raise my eyebrows. This premiere is a perfect example of what happens when you write an episode all about the powers and world building without actually writing any characters.

This is the world where people called espers can develop special abilities based in science and mathematics. Those powers do make them useful for specific jobs and allow them to gain a certain degree of notoriety. I will give the show credit regarding the powers that are on display since the way they work is very unique. There is also some set up here regarding some of the girls' backstory like how one of them was discovered by the team a month prior to the show starting. However, I can't tell you much about who these girls are outside of their abilities and maybe one character quirk. Thank goodness the obviously evil guy broke down their names and their abilities for me like they were characters in a fighting game.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with writing a story that is just action, especially if the main goal is to just attract or hold new viewers. But I would argue that this premiere barely counts as a story because it's just stuff happening. I don't know if I like any of these girls yet, especially since at least some of them have displayed very immoral qualities that are hard to get behind. I'm hoping the rest of the show goes more in depth with their characterization or why they're doing such intense work. But right now, this setup isn't really doing anything for me.

Somehow, despite my chosen profession, I have managed to go my entire life without seeing a single episode of any show from the A Certain… etc franchise. This wasn't intentional on my part; I just never got around to checking out the original A Certain Magical Index anime, and I always assumed that I'd need to do that before digging into any of the other shows about Railguns, Accelerators, and suchlike. Once I found out that all of these series are spinoffs that share the setting of the futuristic Academy City, though, I was excited to sit down with the premiere of A Certain Dark Item. The franchise's art style and character designs seemed right up my alley; I dug the concept of Academy City as a central location, and this show is ostensibly the “Dark” one. At least, its “items” are dark, whatever that means!

This first episode does a good job of introducing new viewers like me to the overall vibe of Academy City and key series lore, like the super-powered Espers. None of this material is unfamiliar to anyone with a decent working knowledge of pop science fiction, so the premiere can focus more on introducing and endearing us to the ladies who will star in this adventure. Shizuri, Rikou, Frenda, and Salai are the titular Team ITEM, who function as a sort of Charlie's Angels group for Academy City as they use their combat and esper skills to take down baddies. For the most part, the episode follows the typical structure of opening episodes in most team-based stories, whether they're action tokusatsu fare or idol anime. We spend the first half with little vignettes that give us glimpses of each heroine's general personality, then the crew heads to the sauna that apparently serves as their HQ debriefing center to get their orders and target for the mission.

Overall, I'd say that A Certain Dark Item gets off to a very solid start. It's certainly not doing anything exceptionally creative or surprising at this point, and I imagine a lot of the fun of seeing Academy City from a new perspective is lost on a neophyte like me, but I still had a lot of fun with this one. It's got sharp character designs, a pleasing art style, and direction that ranges from “Decent enough” to “pretty good once the action gets going.” The evil doctor, apparently trying to make the world's next Akira, makes for a cheesy but perfectly acceptable villain for the girls to take down, too.

I won't say that I'm dying to find out what happens next, since the big-picture story of A Certain Dark Item is only just getting started, and what we have so far isn't the most riveting material in the world. What I can tell you is that the premiere of A Certain Dark Item is good, escapist entertainment through and through. I'm game to check out at least a couple more episodes for good measure, and if nothing else, I'm that much more motivated to go back to the original Magical Index to see if the franchise can really hook me from the beginning.

This may be a me problem, but whenever I try to watch shows spun off from series I haven't watched, I have a hard time getting into it. Not necessarily because it's hard to follow, but because I'm wondering how much of this is hinging on what I'm expected to know. A Certain Dark Item throws a lot of characters at the audience very quickly, and I was preoccupied with whether I could keep up without pre-existing knowledge. And I'll tell you, I know nothing about the A Certain… series. Earlier this season, I had a good time with the Sgt. Frog series, but that's a gag series. This one has, like, a plot and stuff.

The first third of the episode is an onslaught of teenage girls. Girls getting out of bed, girls with armbands helping children, girls with quirky speech patterns, girls in a limousine… These girls live in Academy City, a technologically advanced town where 80% of the population is psychic students. Their character designs hark back to an earlier era, when series about groups of highly competent pretty girls were trendy and light novels were written by professionals, not rank amateurs iterating on the same ideas over and over. There were just so many of them.

Then all those girls went into a sauna, where they were briefed on a mission to rescue some children from a researcher torturing them to enhance their psychic abilities. The choice of setting was genuinely eye-rolling – there was absolutely no reason for the choice except for the camera to ogle their boobs, and ogle it did. Wouldn't the humidity ruin the TV's electronics?

But once the mission actually got going, I realized that I didn't need to know who these girls were. The writing, though not life-changing, was strong enough that their personalities shone through from how they interacted with the world and the other characters while rescuing those poor children. The action was glossy and well-choreographed, with some spectacular effects.

A Certain Dark Item is exactly what you want from pulpy science fiction: pretty animation, a sizable cast of characters whose personalities bounce off one another, and an exciting mission. I just wish it was a bit less obsessed with tits.