The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life

Narukami Ryusei is your typical NEET. He spends his days shut in his room playing video games without a care in the world, living a lazy life. But the truth is, Ryusei used to be a powerful demon king in another world. He wants to spend this new life doing whatever he wants, except that he wasn't the only one reincarnated into this world. The hero who struck him down is here too—and she's a really cute high school girl.

Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life is based on the manga series by Hekiru Hikawa. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

My doctor has advised me several times now to avoid any anime with the words “Next Life” (or any functionally equivalent and proximal synonyms), since the constant outbreaks of hives and shingles they induce for me are starting to get out of hand. When I learned that Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life is actually a reverse-isekai in the vein of such classics as The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, though, I told my doctor to shove off and threw the stacks of bills and release forms in the trash. The odds of this show not actively blowing chunks had just skyrocketed. Most of these reverse-isekai are at least watchable, and “watchable” is something I can absolutely work with.

The premise is still NOTHING NEW, but it's less overdone than the usual isekai trash, and Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life is allowed to lack in novelty since it's trying (and mostly succeeding) to be a wacky romantic comedy. Ryūsei Narukami was once the evil Demon King that brought wrath and ruin to a fantasy world, but now he's just a loser NEET who spends most of his time playing video games. Meteor Hanaori was once Meteor the Hero, brave and valiant foe of all things evil and wicked, but now she's just an everyday high-schooler who spends most of her time bullying Ryūsei for being too chickenshit to keep their fight going. Obviously, they are meant for each other. The English dub does a good job of sustaining the original performances' casual chemistry. Mauricio Ortiz-Segura is doing the same “Vaguely Matthew Mercer-sounding Generic Male Lead” voice that a lot of male actors are asked to fall back on these days, but he still gives the Demon King some personality. Kelly Greenshield also does well at balancing Meteor's haughty, aggressive attitude with some of the more shrill, absurd reactions she has to sell.

The one element of the pair's relationship that some viewers may find odd is the show's choice to have Ryūsei finally get a job as a teacher in the high school that Meteor attends. Given that the characters are technically both several decades older than anyone working in or attending the school, I don't really think Meteor and Ryūsei's relationship is disturbing or improper. It's just playing on an archetype that not every viewer finds especially romantic or sexy. Do with that information what you will.

When you are watching a premiere like this one for Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life, there are really only two questions that matters for most of the audience: “Is the main couple cute?” and “Will I be entertained by their antics?” In this show's case, I think the answer to both those questions is “Yes.” This is a bright, funny, energetic sitcom with a likeable pair of leads and a magical twist that ought to comfortably slot right into your schedule if a cotton-candy palette cleanser is what you're looking for.

How much loud can you tolerate? If the answer is “lots, and make sure it's a pink-haired girl doing the yelling,” then please add a least one star to the score. If the answer is the opposite of that, probably you'll want to skip this one, because it's mostly about Meteor (the pink-haired girl) yelling. Whether or not you think she comes by it honestly is an open question. In the past, she was the hero in a JRPG world, tasked with defeating the demon king…who has also been reborn in modern Japan, as a NEET (and later teacher) named Ryusei. She's either bored enough or determined enough that she thinks she still ought to fight him. He's, shall we say, less convinced.

Honestly, I find this set up rather annoying, but that's mostly because Meteor herself is so irritating. She's not very good at listening to other people and very good at denying her own feelings, which means she's on Ryusei's case a lot and busy denying that her wall-slamming him has any meaning beyond their past lives. To his credit, Ryusei is pretty good about just sort of letting her nonsense wash over him, even if he wishes she'd tone it down at school. He is her homeroom teacher, after all. (So add a student/teacher romance to the reverse isekai genre!) The one scene that made me laugh in this episode was when he and Meteor were talking (mid wall slam) and agreed to keep their past lives “between the two of them,” at which point another teacher walked by, misunderstood the secret, and said it was between the three of them, at which point the camera zooms out and it's between the four of them, and by the time the scene ends, even the campus cat is in on what isn't actually the secret at all. It's a wonderful escalation and hopefully means that the show will quiet down and be funnier going forward.

Apart from one aspect of Meteor's design (those yellow specks in her hair, like she just walked through a forsythia bush), this does look nice and slick. I like the uniform designs and Ryusei's transformation from NEET to teacher, and the two scenes where his sister walks by his open door at just the wrong moment are pretty great. But for the most part, this left me cold and annoyed. I guess I'm just striking out with the comedies this season, with the notable exception of Bungo Stray Dogs Wan!.