The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

From Far Away

On her way home from school one day, Noriko is unexpectedly plunged into a strange and extraordinary fantasy world. Her troubles compound exponentially when she is rescued and befriended by a handsome young man named Izark.

He may be brave and courageous, but inside Izark lurks the darkest evil imaginable. And according to an ancient prophecy, Noriko possesses the power to unleash that evil. Now, inexorably bound together, these two unlikely allies must navigate a world both wondrous and hostile.

From Far Away is based on the manga series by Kyouko Hikawa. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

I don't want to get too “Back in my day…” about things—since I know my instinct to wax nostalgic will no doubt continue to calcify as I age—but I have to be real with you all: Isekai stories were just better back in the 90s. Sure, a lot of the old familiar tropes are still present and accounted for—Noriko gets iced by Truck-kun within two minutes of the episode's start, for one—but there's just something about the solid, cohesive approach to storytelling that hit so much harder in the era of VHS tapes, Walkman players, and regrettably high-waisted fashion. The good news, kids, is that modern anime adaptations give you the chance to learn about what you've been missing out on all this time. Once this premiere is done, I have a bunch of excellent musical recommendations from my generation that you really ought to check out. You see, there's this band called TOOL…

What I love about the premiere of From Far Away is how confident and well-realized it is from jump. The summoning to the other world isn't just some arbitrary plot-device meant to facilitate and endless parade of wish-fulfillment fantasies; Noriko is meant for something in this new world of hers, and she's going to have to do some actual work to figure out what that is. The fantasy setting itself isn't just a bland rehash—even though we're very much on a plane of dragons and wizards and the like. The world of From Far Away immediately feels like the kind of place a fantasy author would dream up for one of her own stories, and not a vague backdrop that's been stolen from a ripoff of a mediocre video game. We get a dream sequence about halfway through the episode that reminds us that Noriko had a whole life back on Earth that was ripped away from her, and unlike modern isekai protagonists, she actually had loved ones and good memories from that time that she misses. Imagine, actual conflict in my anime stories!

In a perfect world, From Far Away would be given the Studio Wit or Science SARU treatment so its fluffy-haired character designs and lush worldbuilding could really get the chance to pop onscreen. Instead, we've got Studio DEEN at the helm, and look: You, me, all of us, we know that DEEN's track record is very hit-or-miss, and even their best shows are only successful in spite of the requisite budgetary and time limitations that the productions are stuck with (this is everyone's weekly reminder to go and watch SHIBOYUGI right now). I won't lie and tell you that From Far Away looks incredible, or even particularly great most of the time, but this first episode is at least competent enough to let the strong storytelling of the source material do its thing. For the most part, it's about on par with a mid-season episode of an early 2000s anime like InuYasha. If it was good enough for us Toonami Brats, then it can be good enough for Gen Z, gosh darn it.

Fans of classic shojo media needed a win after Red River dropped last season and proved to be thoroughly disappointing. I'm thrilled to share, though, that From Far Away, based on the longrunning 90s manga of the same name, completely picks up the slack and is one of the most immediately gripping anime of this season.

Focusing on Noriko, an ordinary high school girl, the story begins with her being thrust into a fantasy world filled with magic, monsters, and warring nation states—after a surprise run-in with Truck-kun. Getting flashes of the world events that led to her summoning to this fantasy world, she's rescued from a slug monster by a handsome stranger and she discovers that she can't understand his language. Fleeing from the woods (and the competing factions trying to capture her), the episode ends with an ominous monologue from her supposed savior who laments that he may have to kill her in the future.

The immediate standout of this episode is Tomoyo Kurosawa as Noriko. There is a lot of screaming in this episode and, while that's usually a mark against an anime, she makes this surprisingly difficult action to convey as an actor contextually appropriate and varied throughout this episode! I also found the language barrier between the two main characters to be a fun wrinkle in the usual isekai set up. Even if the anime could have communicated this barrier better than just adding a shimmering effect when jumping between line deliveries, it's nice that this isekai doesn't just magic over an obvious point of friction in these circumstances. The world building in From Far Away is also immediately enticing and, even if it falls into some kind of “chosen one” storyline, I'm really curious to learn why so many people are pursuing this terrified teenager.

Also, while the visuals aren't stupendous by any measure, they also manage to convey the aesthetics of 90s shojo media pretty effectively, which is a rarity in the digital animation era. I know shojo series regularly get shafted by media that's more overtly chasing male audiences, but From Far Away seems like it could break through the sexist glass ceiling. If nothing else, this seems like it's about to be a terrific exercise in fantasy world building and political machinations, and I'm excited to see what that looks like in an isekai story that's not an overt male power fantasy.

What a relief – after the disaster that is the anime adaptation of Red River, I was terrified that From Far Away would get the same treatment. Happily, that doesn't seem to be the case in the first episode. In part, that may be due to a willingness to make a few adjustments to the story; the original manga is from 1991, and Noriko is sent to a parallel world when a terrorist's bomb explodes. The anime gives her a shorter, more modern uniform skirt and a smartphone and sends her on her way via Truck-kun. I can understand those changes – terrorists are a more loaded subject today than they might have been in 1991, plus the ubiquity of the isekai genre primes people to see traffic accidents as a shortcut to getting to the actual plot. Noriko also spends almost no time with her Japanese belongings, so updating them doesn't change anything except make an audience that might not have been alive when the manga came out feel more at home with the character. In the long run, none of these changes affect the story while still keeping the authorial intent behind their originals.

This episode also does a good job of introducing us to Noriko, Izark, and the world she's fallen into. Noriko is someone known as The Awakening, and she's clearly an anticipated arrival in the political landscape. No sooner has she landed in the forest than two nations fly in on their winged dinosaurs to retrieve her, believing she'll let them control something called “the sky demon.” What Izark's stake in this is hasn't been made clear, but he's stunned that The Awakening is just a teenage girl with the full range of human emotions…and he's also concerned that he'll have to kill her at some point. Whether that was his original intention, we don't yet know, but if it was, her humanity has clearly made him reconsider.

Noriko does a good job of balancing being terrified and trying her absolute best. Her father's a science fiction novelist, so she's at least familiar with the concept of parallel worlds (well, since breakfast, when her older brother mentions it), and although she's thrown by not speaking the same language as Izark, she tries to work around it. Yes, she spends some time screaming and crying, but it's fully understandable – I'd do both in her situation, especially with those horrible flower insects squirming around. That she relents and lets Izark throw away her school bag after initially resisting shows she's trying to understand and adapt.

While the visuals don't capture the charm of Kyouko Hikawa's manga (RIP '80s shoujo eyelashes), it still looks decent, and I like the use of focus vs. out-of-focus shots to let us know what language the dialogue is in. (The different colored subtitles help a non-Japanese audience, but that wouldn't work in Japan.) I'm tentatively excited about this, despite having been burned by Red River. From Far Away is a very different story that may adapt better on its own, but more care is being taken as well. Please, show, don't let me down.