The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai

In the 1910s, Kodō Iwamoto is a third-year student at Seihō Middle School, which is directly controlled by the military and dedicated to collecting and researching supernatural phenomena to harness that power for military use. Under military orders, Kodō travels across the country to investigate supernatural phenomena. In one town where it is rumored that "black snow" falls, he meets a boy who thinks his mysterious powers are an illness. Kodō shows the boy how to use his powers and offers him a letter of recommendation to Seihō Middle School. As he travels to other areas, Kodō encounters many other mysterious events.

Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai is based on the manga series by Hiroshi Shiibashi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

For a series with at least two of my favorite things – Taisho-era setting and supernatural elements – this episode left me strangely ambivalent. It feels a bit like it's going through the motions of a supernatural historical fantasy without bother to spend time on any of them, as if it's just ticking off the boxes. You've got two preternaturally beautiful young men with floral-based magic powers, one of whom is in need of rescuing (from himself), a shady family, a deranged village, and the start of a collection of other preternaturally beautiful young men to fight all things shady and deranged in the interest of saving the country. The overall impression is that someone just really wanted a show combining these things and this is what they came up with.

That's not to suggest that it's entirely without merit. Among the more interesting elements is the military angle. Iwamoto suggests to Shizuma that the army offered him a new life by studying his fire lilies and giving a sense of purpose and a place to belong, something he's offering to the other young man. But where Iwamoto is being sent out on missions, that's not what he's suggesting to Shizuma, or at least, not what he's actually planning for him in his letter to his teacher Kitsujo. Shizuma is basically a human opioid, and in Iwamoto's note, he tells Kitsujo that Shizuma needs to be “studied.” That may come with getting to attend classes, but it certainly conjures up images of dark laboratories and what will simply be a different kind of imprisonment for the young man. Whether or not this would bother Shizuma himself is debatable, given that he self-isolated by creating a burrow underneath the family garden.

The pacing here is just a little too slow. The idea seems to be to throw us into the series in medias res – Iwamoto is already in the army and carrying out his duties, with only a single flashback to his past. But the story still manages to creep along, indulging in myriad close ups of Iwamoto's stoic face or awkward scenes of him walking, with feet looking too small and legs too thick. There aren't any major action scenes even though pitchfork-wielding men keep coming after Iwamoto, and much of the episode is of the “people talking at each other” variety. It's not terrible, but it also doesn't give us much to latch on to in terms of either plot or character. It was definitely one of those episodes where I checked the timer every five minutes.

How the next episode builds on this will be important. If it gives us more characterization or information, or even just Shizuma fretting about people getting near him while Iwamoto doesn't care, it could be promising. But as of right now, I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope.

For as brief as it was, the Taisho Era of Japan makes for such a wonderful setting for a story to exploit, enough so that I am immediately more interested in a series when I can see the telltale signs of the era's swiftly transforming fashion, architecture, and culture. Sure, the rampant escalation of the country's imperial ambitions is, historically speaking, a bit problematic, and an impossible element to completely ignore or unweave when you are telling a story in the Taisho Era. Hell, I have family members who were directly impacted (and tortured, and killed) on account of Imperial Japan running rampant all across the Pacific Theater, so I get it if people give a show like Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai the side-eye when they see characters walking around in all that military dress and having high-falutin talks about the future of the nation.

I'm an avid lover of history and an irreversibly broken anime fanboy, though, so I'm fine enjoying the silly, speculative nature of such stories so long as they don't go and get all fascist on me with the themes and character arcs and all. It's obviously too early to tell exactly what Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai has in mind for its bigger picture, but so far as premieres go, I liked this one. It's always fun when a series blends its historical trappings with a focus on supernatural phenomena, and while I personally wouldn't mind if Iwamoto-Senpai committed a bit more to an atmosphere of horror, it's fine if the show settles for treating Iwamoto and his investigations as just being cool. I dig the imagery of poisoned flowers and blackened snow that comes with the curse contained within Shizuma's body, and I'm interested to see where his relationship with the equally cursed Iwamoto goes as they build up their group of pretty-boy Japanese X-Men.

The most unfortunate aspect of Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai is that it is a series that is attempting, but not entirely succeeding at, punching above its weight class when it comes to what the team at Studio DEEN is capable of. Maybe it's because the studio is putting more resources into other productions like the upcoming SHIBOYUGI film, but either way, this is not the company's best-looking production by a long shot, and they were never a studio esteemed for the fluidity and detail of their animation to begin with. I always try to get the most flattering screenshots I can for a writeup (unless a studio like GoHands is begging me to do otherwise), but this is one of those premieres where pretty much every shot had something that wasn't quite right about it. The character models often look flat or out of line with the camera's perspective. The movement is stiff and wooden. Worst of all is the way that the effects of the character's magic powers never look particularly convincing or, well, magical.

It's a shame, because there's a lot of potential in a story like Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai, but I am already getting the impression that this series will have trouble rising to meet it. Hopefully the next episode will at least be able to establish stronger connections to more characters that will help audiences overlook its meager offerings as a work of animation.

It's been a while since I've watched a show that seemed to be all about investigating the supernatural. I do enjoy stories where stoic, wise characters enter areas that have these rumors, or supernatural phenomena take place because they can be interesting, especially when the supernatural occurrences could highlight something deeper or darker about the area that they are taking place in. That was very much the vibe I was getting for the first half of this premiere, something similar to shows like Mushi-Shi with its quiet atmosphere and slower pace. The full episode revolving around the black snow and the reveal about it being a symptom of a larger hallucination brought upon by a supernatural ability was fun and I like how that black snow both starts as well as bookends the episode itself.

However, the second half of the episode leads me to believe that this show might end up being closer to X-Men, a school of gifted yet seemingly cursed supernatural students. It seems like these abilities are tied into flower motifs and I like the fact that the episode had a few red herrings with regards to what the intentions of the village chief were when it came to Shizuma. Normally in stories like this, the old parental figure is usually a villain, but turns out he just wanted what was best for the boy. What's difficult about this premiere is that while there is a lot that happens in this self-contained village, there isn't much about it that gets revealed on a larger scale.

I still don't know who Iwamoto really is, I get a little bit of information about the school he's from and how it seems to be tied to the military, and the ending monologue seems to imply that the show will be more about the relationship between these two boys. This is probably the first premiere of this season that legitimately has me a bit stumped on what exactly I should look forward to. Is this premiere an inciting incident to get the actual show started or is it reflective of what the rest of the show is going to be like? I'm going to give the show a couple more episodes but at the very least it does have me drawn in with its sense of atmosphere.

If I didn't know this originally ran in Ultra Jump+, I would have assumed it was based on a BL otome game. The hyper-designed male cast falls all over the androgyny spectrum, with the single uniting factor that they're all very pretty in a way that appeals to a broadly female audience—and Atsuko Nakajima, one of the industry's greatest character designers, has translated the manga's elaborate art style into animation.

Unfortunately, even then, the animators at Studio DEEN still couldn't keep up. The characters struggle to stay on model, even when they're standing stock still. Iwamoto's head is constantly changing sizes compared to his body, and his features frequently morph and melt like unfinished clay. Shizuma, hunched in his little cave, tends to take on the shape of a mound rather than a person. It's such a shame; I like pretty boys as much as the next person, and this one does have potential to catch on with the fujoshi crowd. Although, Knight Hunters was extremely popular in its time, and have you seen the animation in that? If not, I recommend you look it up. It makes for a great disasterpiece; the animation in Recommendations from Iwamoto-Senpai, on the other hand, fails to reach those depths.

The story has some potential as a supernatural mystery anthology—with a side of homoerotic tension between the largely male cast. Iwamoto moves from town to town, inspecting rumors of supernatural phenomena and determining whether they'll be of use to the military. I'm going to set aside that means recruiting supersoldiers for nascent Japanese imperialism, because that would mean taking this show seriously for half a second. The script is as stilted as the animation. Iwamoto may deliver the hackiest lines with a perfectly straight face, but I could not keep mine. I rolled my eyes. I sighed. I groaned. Maybe this one is on the translators, but it made it impossible to take the emotions of the story seriously.

Maybe things will ease up once more of the boys are introduced and we can get the group dynamic going. But just remember, fujoshi army: these boys are in middle school. Have fun!