The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Reincarnated as a Sword Season 2

Some isekai protagonists are reincarnated as powerful warriors or skilled wizards, but our protagonist was reborn as a sentient sword! He's taken up by Fran, a desperate girl fleeing evil-doers intent on selling her into slavery. With her new weapon's help and guidance, she strikes down her captors and secures her freedom. Together, the unconventional master-student duo embarks on an epic journey to liberate those in need and exact justice on the cruel of heart.

Reincarnated as a Sword Season 2 is based on the light novel series by Yuu Tanaka. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Wednesdays.

Judging by the hilariously edgy visuals and music of Reincarnated as a Sword's very welcome second-season opening sequence, one might expect the show to be some kind of grimdark fantasy in the Berserk or Attack on Titan mold. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. One part Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, one part Reincarnated as a Vending Machine, and one part Nekopara (without the objectification), it's a mostly cute and cozy show where Fran, an adorable cat girl, wanders the world, assisted by her unnamed (she calls him “sensei”) sentient sword companion.

Fran is most definitely the main reason to watch the show. Her facial expressions and squeaky voice scream “moe” in every scene, though she's no slouch in the action department either. In this episode, Fran and her sword sensei try to reach a Laputa-like floating island. Unlike the Ghibli version, this one's full of skeleton monsters, unfortunately. As luck would have it, after their first failed attempt to reach the island, they crash-land in a barn full of suspicious-looking pink-and-purple-spotted flowers growing in the dark, tended by a necromancer.

Usually in fantasy, necromancers are bad news, but this chap, Jean, is a surprisingly decent sort. Not only can he summon massive friendly flying skeleton wyvern thingies, but he's good in a fight too. He's also skilled at terrible dad jokes, so that's a bonus, sort of. I love his meek little skeleton minion who has a tiny flower growing from one of the cracks in his skull.

Reincarnated as a Sword may be just another isekai power fantasy, but it has enough unique flourishes to make it worthwhile. For one, the sword guy, although powerful, isn't really the focus. Yes, there are JRPG-like status screens aplenty, plus talks of levels and skills and classes, but I'll forgive that kind of narrative laziness when Fran, and her big doggy companion who keeps running out of MP and slinking into her shadow to recover, are both so completely adorable.

The battle sequences are a cut above the usual isekai slop too, with dynamic angles and decent animation. It's always an interesting show to look at. I'm very glad Fran and her sensei are back on our screens, and I'm looking forward to whatever nonsense they get up to next.

Somehow, Fran manages to be even cuter in this episode than she was in the last. Clearly, the producers have realized she's their killer feature. Every episode could just be Fran making funny faces and cute noises, and I'd probably be happy. This time, another cutesy character threatens to overwhelm the audience's moe instincts: the blushing zombie boy Stephan.

Stephan's got a complicated backstory, and we've seen some of the very edgy history behind the undead body he's currently possessing, revealed in disturbing flashbacks throughout this and the last episode. He seems to be an ethereal servant of Fran's new necromancer pal Jean, though, and very happy to see his old master, whom he perceives via Amazing Sparkly Shojovision. Stephan has a few sparkles in his eye himself, but nothing compared to Jean's appearance in Stephan's mind's eye. Get a room, you two. (I assume that, as ancient undead abominations, they're both consenting adults, despite appearances.)

Today's episode is a super-fun dungeon crawl with awesome battles, some sick new skills, and lots of entertaining banter between our party of funny fantasy friends. The animation remains spectacular, and during Stephan's super-creepy entry scene, he seems to have been animated on ones or at least twos to give his movement a disturbing smoothness. I love those kind of daft little touches.

The tragic flashbacks are tonally quite different from the otherwise jolly dungeon-crawling escapades, and I wonder if anything more will come of this backstory later? The red-haired girl who is horribly scarred by the evil experimenters comes back as a zombie boss for Fran to mess up, but she's left bisected on the floor. Is that really it for her?

We leave off with a rematch against the skeleton dude that gave Fran, Teacher, and their puppy such a hard time last week. As the credits rolled, I couldn't believe the episode ended so quickly. What a great, fun series this is; I'm so happy it's back.

First off, the Daicon IV reference is still as great as I remember. Once again: a catgirl like Fran flying on top of a giant sword like Sensei, as cliched as it is, will not be cool, especially when it's done so right. But you know what also holds up really, really well, though, perhaps even better than I remember? That OP. FZMZ delivered exactly the right type of high-fantasy metal cheese needed for this type of anime. It is (and I mean this as a compliment) a symphonic shlockfest of the highest order filled with cartoonishly evil riffs, hyperbolically operatic vocals, and lyrical odes to dreams, distances, dimensions, butterflies, and whatever else every nerdy metal act has waxed poetic about a thousand times over by now. Also, excuse me, is that a reference to Apocalypse Now, I see? Very nice. It's an obvious choice, something that has been done many times before, but so are references to Daicon IV. The point is that I still respect this anime's ability to see an opportunity and run with it. Especially when it does it with such blink-and-you-miss-it subtlety.

So here I am, watching the first episode of Reincarnated as a Sword's second season once again. This time I am home alone in front of my computer screen instead of watching it on a giant screen with a massive audience huddled inside a tight pocket of the Javits Center. The environment changes, the video and audio quality changes, but my opinions about it have not. Just about everything I said at the first episode's Anime NYC premiere still holds true. The action sequences are fun to watch even if the animation is a bit rough around the edges; new characters and situations come through naturally, and Fran and Sensei's dynamic is wonderfully reintroduced through lighthearted buddy comedy. There's still that slave plotline that bookends the episode, plus the edgy, metallic nature of the OP to keep in mind, so I'm going to assume the action and humor are here to pack in as many yuks as possible before the anime wanders into darker territory. All in all, it's the same fun episode I saw a month ago. I could probably copy and paste 90% of my Anime NYC article here, clap my hands together, and be done.

I won't. Here's one thing I noticed back then that I didn't write about, that I should have written about, especially now that a second viewing has made it clearer. The sequencing and pacing. There is a lot going on in this episode, and the narrative can be thought of in five different segments: Fran and Sensei starting their new adventure by riding Jet and eating curry, flying to the floating island and then getting knocked down by a floating skeleton, being introduced to Bertrand and Jean, flying back up again and successfully landing onto the floating island once more to explore a dungeon, and of course the slave plotline that bookends it all. If the anime wanted to be sluggish, it had enough to drag its events out for two episodes. If the anime wanted to rush through things, it could have skimmed through its opening moments just the same, maybe even cut a few bits out. It does none of that. The episode moves from one event to another without feeling long, or like it's throwing too much exposition and action at you at once. The action sequences are quick and to the point, while the slower scenes introducing Jean and his background (which take up perhaps a good third of this episode) feel substantial and expository enough to not feel like a dragged-out dialogue dump. These are small things, but they go a long way with me.

I like this show so far, although as I've said before, I'm not jumping up and down for it. It didn't even crack my list of most anticipated anime of the fall season. I need to call a spade a spade here: Reincarnated as a Sword is another flavor of power fantasy where catgirl Kirito teams up with a giant sword to become bigger and stronger. That's all it is. It's an isekai world you've seen before, playing by more or less the same rules, filled with plenty of archetypes you will see in fantasy and isekai again, and again, and again, and again. You don't need to read Mechademia to understand where this is going. It's exactly what you expect, and it delivers. For what will end up being leftover seasonal popcorn, that is all I can ever ask for.

Honestly, this episode is making me rethink the way I see Reincarnated as a Sword's animation and art style. It's getting better and better for me. The dungeon Fran and company crawl has a color scheme that lunges out at me, especially on its first floor, which consists of a wonderful blend of ghoulish yet garish shades of purple, blue, and red that look like they came out of one the most hottest nightclub raves to ever hit the world of isekai. And how about that fight with not-Kyoko from Madoka Magica at the very end, with all of its glowing weapons and explosions providing a very-welcomed burst of sakuga? I can't emphasize this enough: for a show I wasn't expecting much from, Reincarnated as a Sword has not only been a pleasant surprise for me, it's a show that continues to surprise me with each passing moment.

Our second season's second outing features a dungeon crawl. And it plays all of the hits, too. We've got undead baddies and a giant sneki boi to whack. We have curry for Fran to eat. We've got metal songs playing in the background playing out the wazoo, including one track at around the 15:30ish marked by razor-sharp guitar power chords that freakin' BANG. Granted, like most everything you've seen in Reincarnated as a Sword so far, what you've got here is your standard stuff. But thanks to the ever-strong buddy-buddy chemistry between Fran and Sensei, combined with strong action and comedy sequences that haven't lost their luster this far into the anime, everything is as fun as ever and these characters have not lost their charm on me.

We also get some more development on the slavery plotline too. Flashbacks reveal that inside the floating island, mad scientists performed experiments on enslaved children to turn them into the undead, which explains the hordes of skeletons and zombies that Fran and Sensei have to go up against. One of the enslaved, a little boy whose diary entries provide commentary during these flashback sequences, was turned into a giant undead entity, and then somehow fused with one of the necromancer Jean's summons, Stephan, some time ago. Given how this kid provided the commentary on the flashbacks, plus the fact that Stephan is seen holding that kid's diary, the foreshadowing is pretty obvious. Still, there's just enough of his character that's introduced without it feeling too expository, and leaves just enough hints in and details out in order to raise some intrigue and give us something more than another round of mindless hack-and-slash dungeon faire.

I doubt that there will be a single aspect of this episode that will surprise you. To put it in overtly simplistic terms, it all boils down to the classic, “if you liked what came before, then what's stopping you from liking this?” For a show like this, that's all you need.

Reincarnated as a Sword worked by simply being a much stronger, much more likable (re)incarnation of the modern isekai formula. Teacher and Fran were a cool pair with a strong rapport; they were strong but not overpowered, and the fights that facilitated regularly got extremely cool. The worldbuilding for the requisite game-flavored fantasy world could be thoughtful, with one caveat: the show still leaned into light-novel-tastic overindulgence in explaining RPG mechanics, to the point that Fran herself regularly conked out during them. So it's easy to understand why my body seized up when, in this premiere of the second season, an incoming infodump prompted Fran to proudly declare that her recently raised adventurer rank meant she could totally handle these explanations now. Was her promotion last season really just a reason for the story to indulge even more exhausting explanations?

The scene immediately cuts to Fran passed out on the table. After all this time, it's fantastically funny as an anticlimax, and it also gives Teacher reason to give us, the audience, the Cliff's Notes version of the explanation. Truly, Reincarnated as a Sword has learned, and is showing a step up. Those four long years between seasons must have made a point on the production. Overall, the anime feels more confident. It might be because it's been so long coming back, but this first episode has no problem rewinding the proceedings from the first season's cliffhanger tease to ease viewers back into the situation and expand upon the fight with the skeleton knight that sent Fran and Teacher down into the current storyline in the first place. I'll even take the slightly more detailed explanation of how Fran's surfing around on the telekinetically powered Teacher works, since seeing a catgirl sky-surf on a sword was like 50% of why I was in for this show anyway. I'd have half a mind to call the first season a Surf Dracula for taking so long to get to that had it not been plenty of fun on its own.

The fun is so pointedly back with Reincarnated as a Sword for this new season. The skeleton knight fight has layers and stages, and it's one of two dazzling aerial raves this episode packs in. But set between those ascents to Brawlhalla is the meet-and-greet with the current questgiver, the necromancer Jean, and the aforementioned explanations of his whole deal. Some of this is wrapped in Reincarnated's customary more-thoughtful takes on fantasy standbys, so here necromancers are an important part of the undead ecosystem and not necessarily evil. Jean's actually pretty cool once you get past his blustery tendencies. He has a propensity for naming all his summoned necromantic minions things like "Bernard" and "Andy," and he even shows how story explanations and the show's distinct flavor can be interwoven.

That is, phase one of getting up to the floating dungeon they need to conquer sees Jean summon his biggest, baddest, bone dragon (christened "Andy" natch) to fly himself, Teacher, and Fran up there. The fight is, again, dense with layers and steps, including deployments of cannons and whole hordes of skeleton warriors for the heroes to hack through. But it's propelled by the only temporarily summoned Andy, who needs to burn through all of himself to make it onto the sky-island. So the whole thing is wrapped in the drama of the characters passionately cheering the name of this skeleton dragon they met fifteen minutes ago, in the same tenor as a group of over-invested player characters in a tabletop RPG campaign would about the same sort of entity. By the end, as Jean is expending MP to peacefully send Andy off for his sacrifice, it imparts his character and the connection necromancers have with their familiars in this setting, and is both so absurdly earnest and earnestly absurd that I had to respect Reincarnated as a Sword for making it work. It feels true to the setting and communicates the tone of this world and how it works, which is so much better than just explaining it at length. Then Jean turns straight to the camera and makes a bone-headed pun. I think I love this guy.

Not that it's perfect right out of the gate. Studio C2C hasn't missed a beat, meaning the fights are as slick as ever, though the character models (that aren't CGI) can slip into more simplification than I'd like sometimes, and some effects look a bit cheap. And I'm not sure how well this framing flashback to the torturous origins of the apparent new villain, currently known as "Nameless," will jibe with the rest of this. But Fran's dark backstory and the show's respectful treatment of it were a strong feature at the beginning of Reincarnated as a Sword. Put it on the "wait and see" pile for now, and for the rest of it, enjoy the ride. Be sure to pay respects to Andy upon arriving.

Now that Teacher and Fran have found a way up to the sky island with Jean, a new dungeon-crawling session can begin in earnest. If there's one issue this episode of Reincarnated as a Sword brings back to mind, it's the way this sort of standard dungeoneering can come off purely perfunctory when the heroes are decently strong enough. It doesn't even need to be a situation of them being overpowered as in so many other isekai—anybody who's played a typical RPG knows that it's simply not the rank-and-file encounters in a dungeon that pose a threat, but navigating the level with them as but one element to deal with that makes the exercise interesting. In practice though, that means the action, which has so often been the lifeblood of this anime, feels a little too cozy and casual in these circumstances.

What Reincarnated as a Sword can do to try to up the engagement, even as the combat has all the thrill of a 9-to-5 office job, is use it as actual background to let the characters deliver more information and exposition about…well, everything. Some of it's the more overt game-mechanic spillage on the subjects of stats and skills. So Teacher and Fran learn more about a rare monster ability that can protect their identities from the likes of Jean's Soulsight. And then of course they nonchalantly find the rare monster and procure the ability with little fuss. It' the same sort of deal with Teacher suddenly evolving the ability to transform, then resolving not to use it for now since it's too much of a mana drain. It's an odd case of the old isekai standby of just adding more cool stuff onto the leads' pile of cool stuff.

The other skill indulgences are a bit more fun and, expectedly, come at the behest of Jean showing off—specifically his use of an undead meat-shield to brute-force traps ahead of the party, plus a flying zombie ghost scout to map the dungeon out are actually amusing in their fantastical utility. Jean's kind of doing the thing of using standard sorts of skills in creative ways that's regularly seen in the main/reincarnated characters in these sorts of shows, except near as I can tell he is, himself, a regular denizen. It gives a glimpse of the world of Reincarnated as a Sword having more individualism and creativity to it than just the way its leads have branched out to break that system.

That means there's enough depth that parts can be questioned as well. No sooner can the audience question when the edgy flashbacks of Nameless will converge with the present-day plot, then the creepy kid rounds the corner and turns out to be…Jean's aforementioned minion Stephan, having possessed him? It's an unusual underclimax, but Stephan and Jean's dynamic is itself kind of cute, with the writing and interactions working together to put the new character over. So much so that it's actually suspicious. Stephan's abrupt departure from the party to go on some secret contingency mission after mere montages of getting on well with the rest of the party makes it questionable just how much trust can be put in the new companion. It's odd, but just a lingering cliffhanger to be paid off (hopefully) next week.

This storyline will probably need some last segment to spice it up, since so much of it really is business-as-usual otherwise for Reincarnated as a Sword. The eighth-floor guardian at least shows that Teacher and Fran can't plow through any enemy effortlessly, plus she's a badass spear-wielding zombie lady, so I'm going to enjoy her regardless until our heroes Darth Maul her ass. The fight itself brings out more delicious effects on the action, like sketchy impact frames on the weapon clashes, or one moment where the movement of Teacher's sword blade is traced by a gleaming trail. At least the lacking action with the regular random encounters arguably makes this indulgence stand out even more.

It's enough to stay interesting, even as this episode still feels like it has middle-child syndrome for this arc. So much of the mechanical talk feels like distraction, and the meatier stuff is just setup for now. I trust Reincarnated as a Sword to stick the landing, and make this work as a cohesive whole. But for now I'm just left waiting to see how it will work out, and how much I'll be left to like Jean and/or Stephan by the time it's over.