The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Reborn as a Space Mercenary

Takahiro Sato was an ordinary office worker and hobbyist gamer until the day he woke up on a spaceship–one that strangely resembled a craft from a favorite space-shooter game. With a decked-out ship, a crew full of babes, and a fantastic universe to explore, he's going to make the most of his good luck and create the life he's always dreamed of.

Reborn as a Space Mercenary is based on the light novel series by author Ryūto and illustrator Tetsuhiro Nabeshima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

Space must be absolutely filthy. Not only does the opening theme for this show feature three inexplicable space maids, but the salvage drones look like nothing so much as space Roombas. Either someone is really into cleanliness, or this is the grossest interstellar world ever.

…I have to admit that I'm leaning towards the latter.

About the kindest thing I can say about this episode is that it's set in space in a science fiction RPG rather than in yet another fantasy game. Otherwise, it's very much what you've seen before in other isekai stories: a worker drone goes from being in the office to waking up in another world. He quickly recognizes it as a game he has over three thousand hours in, figures out that this is real life, and manages to blow up space pirates and then be remarkably inappropriate with the second woman he meets. He's much better to women one and three, and given his statement to Elma (woman 2), I am forced to believe that this is because both Serena and Mimi are large-busted, while Elma has, and I quote, “pitifully small breasts” that she “proudly shove[s] in [his] face.” I must point out that not only is it utterly disgusting for him to say, it's also categorically false, unless he assumes that merely existing in front of him while talking is her shoving her boobs in his face. The episode later attempts to redeem him by having him be the only person willing to step in when Mimi is about to be sexually assaulted, and I know this is an attempt at redemption because all the other bystanders (besides Elma) are men with creepy leers on their faces as they listen to Mimi scream.

In space, no one can hear you barf.

The episode's other sins are more in line with what we've come to expect from bottom-tier isekai. Hiro spends most of the episode narrating so that we know what's going on; there's a mild attempt at worldbuilding, and Lady Serena inexplicably wears her bra outside her clothes, held in place with what looks like a boob garter. Hiro is ridiculously overpowered, and everyone wants a piece of him in one way or another, and his primary personality trait seems to be “is a jerk.” I at least like the design of his spaceship, the Krishna, which has an appealing bug-like appearance, but that's really not enough to make up for the way this episode treats women and its otherwise dull execution. If I didn't have to watch a second episode for this guide, I'd be actively trying to forget the whole thing.

I don't know if Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship! is the first isekai to premiere this season, but it's the first I watched of the season thanks to screeners going out early, and it doesn't look like this is going to be a hallmark quarter for the longtime stagnated and now slowly dying genre.

Focusing on Hiro, an IT guy who wakes up in a world that more or less mimics his favorite sci-fi video game, Reborn as a Space Mercenary follows his exploits as a, you guessed it, space mercenary. In this first episode, those antics include: killing some jobber space pirates and robbing them blind, getting registered as an official mercenary (but only being placed in Bronze rank, which is sure to be a source of people underestimating him as the show goes on), and starting to fill out his harem with a space elf whose chest size he immediately comments on and a young woman in the midst of being sexually assaulted. Throughout this episode, Reborn as a Space Mercenary does little to distinguish itself from other isekai outside its sci-fi setting and looks incredibly slapdash, with barely moving characters and a liberal use of CGI.

Part of me almost wishes this premiere were worse so I'd have more to dig into and write about, but it's so boilerplate that my every comment could apply to at least a dozen other isekai from this year. It's annoying and feeds into toxic masculinity mentalities that the show expects me to root for Hiro while he's just doing the bare minimum to not be an irredeemable jerk. The immediate sexualization of the female characters is overtly sexist, and the T&A shots of them in the OP make it clear that they only exist as sex objects for the MC. This episode also seems to set up Hiro's primary motivations as “get rich and have a harem,” which is so well-trodden in isekai that it's practically paved over.

I guess one unique thing about Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship! is its terrible ending animation. With the credits scrolling across a black monitor as a slideshow of daily life on the spaceship plays, it almost feels like the staff didn't want people to watch the credits so they wouldn't realize they worked on this deeply flawed project. Another review of this anime comes next week, but it's already clear it's not worth watching.

I have been saying for years that if this doggoned isekai trend is going to hold us all in its thrall until we wither and die from old age, then the least the anime industry could do is give us more space isekai. If I see another one of those damned generic RPG cities encircled by a wall and filled with red-roofed cottages, I am liable to have a stroke. I'll be a much happier camper if you just wrap up the junk food in a shiny wrapper decorated with space stations, intergalactic dogfights, and aliens.

Thankfully, the universe has decided to listen to my expert advice, and we've gotten more isekai anime of late that dare to reach for the stars…at least so far as the set dressing is concerned. I'm an Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire proved to be a hoot when it crashed the gates last year, and here we have Reborn as a Space Mercenary. This time, we're playing things more straight so far as the whole “Reincarnated into the setting of a video game” shtick goes, but again, I'm giving this show credit for making its hero, the oh-so-creatively named “Hiro,” a Han Solo-type with a spaceship and a trusty crew of anime girls. This is not the same premise I have been forced to sit through several hundred times already. That goes a long way.

But does it go long enough? Unfortunately, the somewhat novel setup is basically the only thing that Reborn as a Space Mercenary has going for it, because this is functionally still the same old crap that we'd get in any other lame isekai tax write-off, except this time the sassy girl with pointy ears is a Space Elf. The generic RPG hero named “Hiro” is a Space Hero who has to go on Space Quests after registering his Space Class at the Space Guild. This is, of course, after Hiro commits some casual Space Sexual Harassment when he ogles Elma the Space Elf's Space Breasts. This is a text review, so you'll have to just trust me and use your imagination when I say that I'm playing a cheesy theremin riff straight out of a cheapo Z-grade sci-fi flick as I type this.

Once again, I ask the writers of these isekai light novels to please, for the love of all that is holy, play an actual video game to rip off for your books. Clearly, the shameful stink of plagiarism means nothing at this point, so can we at least plagiarize from the good art? It won't make these amateurish copies any less embarrassing, but they'll at least become moderately more entertaining. So many cool science-fiction games put real effort into developing alien species and larger-than-life conflicts. So why are we stuck with isekai that apparently only knows the most boring parts of EVE Online? Call me when an anime has the guts to give me the isekai clone of, like, Warhammer 40,000 or something.