Anime Deep Dive: Winter 2025–2026
The Winter 2025–2026 anime season is officially mid-cour, which means it’s the perfect time to lock in some takes before the algorithm decides for us. Below is the TV Tier List staff consensus after watching every premiere we could stomach and the first six episodes of everything that survived.
This is a snapshot — every show in this post is also live on the Global Rankings where you can override us with your own grid.
The shape of the season
Three patterns stood out this season:
- Sequels are eating the chart. Six of our top ten slots are returning shows. The bar for new IP is brutal right now.
- Adult drama is having a moment. Two of the most talked-about premieres are quiet, character-driven shows aimed at people who finished college a while ago.
- The isekai well isn’t dry, but it’s getting shallow. Plenty of new entries, almost none of them ranked above C.
S-Tier — the no-brainers
These are shows we’d happily defend in a fight.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End — Season 2
It’s still doing the thing. Pacing remains the studio’s secret weapon: episodes have time to breathe in a way that almost nothing else on the schedule does. The first arc of season 2 leans harder into the demon politics setup from the manga, and the cold opens this cour have been quietly devastating.
Hot take: the anime adaptation is now objectively pacing the manga better than the manga paces itself.
Apothecary Diaries — Season 2
Maomao is back, and the mystery-of-the-week structure has tightened up considerably. The court intrigue arc that kicks off in episode 3 is the closest thing this season has to “appointment TV”. Production values remain unfair.
Re:Zero — Season 4 (Cour 1)
If you bounced off season 3, this is your invitation back. The arc reset has done wonders for the pacing, and Subaru is finally being written like someone who has lived through everything that happened to him.
A-Tier — quietly brilliant
Shows that aren’t going to top any popularity polls but are doing real work.
- Medalist — A figure-skating sports drama with a pilot episode that earned tears we didn’t agree to. Anyone who’s ever been told they “started too late” should be watching this.
- Sakamoto Days — Cour 2 gets the action choreography it deserved in cour 1. The fight in episode 4 is the best two minutes of animation we’ve seen all winter.
- Solo Leveling — Season 2 — Style over substance, but the style is immaculate.
B-Tier — fine, watchable, won’t change your life
The “I’ll finish it” zone. Worth a slot in your weekly rotation, not worth recommending unprompted.
- Zenshu — A meta show about animation that tries hard and lands maybe sixty percent of the time.
- Honey Lemon Soda — Pleasant high-school romance. Inoffensive. The platonic ideal of a B-tier shoujo.
- Sorairo Utility — Cute-girls-do-golf is a niche we didn’t know we’d accept. Here we are.
C-Tier — wait for the binge
Probably better watched in a single weekend in six months than weekly now.
- The Beginning After The End — The source material is great. The adaptation is… serviceable.
- Magic Maker — Workshop-isekai with a slow-build premise that hasn’t built anything yet by episode 6.
D / F — dropped
We won’t name names because the people who made them are doing their best, but two of this season’s higher-profile premieres were dropped by the entire staff after episode 3, and one isekai earned an unprompted F-tier vote in our Slack within ninety seconds of the OP.
If you’re curious which ones, our personal grids on TV Tier List are public and we are not subtle.
How to argue with us
Our entire ranking is built right into TV Tier List. To register your disagreement:
- Sign up at app.couchrank.com.
- Add the shows above to your grid.
- Drop them into your own tiers.
- Compare your grid against ours and tell us we’re wrong.
We’ll do another deep dive at the end-of-season finale dust settles. Until then — keep watching, keep ranking.
— The TV Tier List team