The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle Season 2

Saku Chitose is a student at Fujishi High School, the most prestigious school in Fukui Prefecture. Outstanding in class, on the field, and in his social life, Saku attracts attention, good and bad. Naturally, he is surrounded by a circle of friends anyone would be happy to have. Now in the spring of his second year, with a new class, Saku is asked to help a shut-in classmate return to school life.

Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle Season 2 is based on the light novel series by Hiromu and illustrator raemz. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

While I certainly had mixed feelings about last year's production delay-infested first season of this glossy light novel anime adaptation, they weren't as universally negative as my fellow ANN reviewers assessments. I figured there must be something about this story that won it legions of fans both in Japan and in North America. Perhaps this season will be the one to convert anime-only watchers? That's if anyone who wasn't put off by the unfortunate mixture of initially unappealing protagonist and terrible scheduling has stuck around.

Last season ended partway through its adaptation of the third novel, with Chitose “eloping” with love interest Asuka Nishino. Though the series is structured Monogatari-style with each arc focusing on Chitose's interactions with a single heroine, his relationship with Asuka seems a little deeper than with the other girls. I get the impression that Chitose actually likes her romantically, rather than how he merely messes around with the others.

Asuka's controlling father wants her to remain in her hometown and become a public servant, while her earnest wish is to move to Tokyo to become a professional editor for a publishing company. Her father's objection is to the low odds of her success, and her (in his eyes at least) wasting her late teens and twenties chasing an ephemeral dream. In comparison, compromising and becoming a school teacher offers a guaranteed, stable career path. We can understand his concerns, and Asuka was willing to capitulate under Chitose blustered in. Now he's dragged her to Tokyo for an impromptu trip, presumably to give her a taste of what she might be missing.

Although Asuka's a year older, she's much more timid in unfamiliar settings. Her manic pixie girl-like self confidence completely evaporates as soon as she's faced with the big, crowded city, and she clings to Chitose for reassurance. This is an inversion of their previous relationship, where upon first meeting her, Chitose was morose and depressed, and her energetic vivaciousness pulled him out of his shell.

The direction takes pains to focus on Asuka's eyes and rapidly changing facial expressions, in fact we even see her reflected in Chitose's eyes at one point. What do these characters see when they look at one another? Both are becoming acutely aware of the difference a year makes in adolescence. If Asuka leaves for college, leaving Chitose behind to finish school, he knows she'll likely move on in life without him, making new experiences, and new relationships that will fundamentally change her as a person. In your twenties, a gap of a year or two isn't so significant, but for a seventeen and eighteen year old, that gap may as well be a decade.

So for Chitose, this trip may be a way to say “goodbye” to the girl he has idolized, while helping her to make her own decision for her future. Not that it will be that easy, considering the phone call he takes from both his teacher and Asuka's father. Understandably, Asuka's dad can't stand this arrogant young upstart. Our duo's Tokyo trip feels a little too contrived to be a natural plot progression. At a restaurant they just happen to sit near a struggling author receiving words of encouragement and inspiration from his editor. Two teenagers wandering around Kabuchiko at night doesn't seem like the safest thing either, so Asuka being approached by a creep seems like it could have been avoidable if either of them had a clue. This leads to them running away into the entrance of a love hotel, which seems like the kind of development I've seen in countless other shows.

I can't imagine this will lead to any real romantic development between Chitose and Asuka, mainly because there are several other girls in the opening sequence who haven't had their individual arcs yet, and we haven't even begun to address whatever trauma Chitose endured that caused him to quit baseball. Maybe the story will subvert my expectations, but I don't have hugely high hopes. This show is running at very much “okay” level for me at present. It looks gorgeous (especially the almost scandalously smooth animation of Asuka's lip-licking), but the persistent artifice of the situations and characters keeps my emotional involvement at arms' length.