5 anime letdowns of the summer — one made the list because nobody watches it

The summer 2026 season is, by any sane measure, a good one. Which is exactly why the disappointments sting: when the bar is high, "fine" starts to feel like a personal insult. Here are five shows currently underdelivering — including one that did absolutely nothing wrong except air in front of an empty room.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: death by committee

Fans didn't nickname a previous season "That Time I Got Stuck in a Meeting" for nothing. Rimuru remains impossibly easy to root for, and season four's first cour did honest repair work — beloved faces back, world reintroduced. But the show is still circling the runway, and viewers who signed up for a nation-building power fantasy keep getting agenda items. Something big is clearly loading. It has been "clearly loading" for a while.

The Elusive Samurai: season one was the problem

Season one looked like someone animated a museum heist — frames you could frame. That's the trap. Season two is a perfectly decent show living in the shadow of a spectacular one, with visuals a notch down and a lead who feels like he's regressing rather than sharpening. When your only real crime is not being your own predecessor, that's less a failure than a hostage situation.

Black Torch: the word is "fine"

Crunchyroll is pushing it hard, and the show is... fine. A boy, a demonic entity, one shared body — a premise that Naruto, Chainsaw Man, and Parasyte already wrung dry. In a weaker season, competent would be enough. In this one, competent is invisible.

Mushoku Tensei: review bombed for being itself

Season three's scores are ugly, and the reason is pacing — which is a bit like buying a novel and leaving a one-star review because it contains chapters. Mushoku Tensei has always been slow-burn worldbuilding punctuated by violence, not the other way around; the loudest ratings spikes this season belong to the Eris episodes, i.e., the ones where things bleed. Punishing a series for its defining feature isn't criticism, it's a tantrum with a star rating attached.

Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia — the letdown is you, specifically

And here's the heartbreaker. Science SARU's historical drama about Sitara, an enslaved girl in 13th-century Persia who survives on intelligence, is the most distinctive thing airing right now — and the viewership numbers suggest a private screening. The studio didn't phone this in: chief director Naoko Yamada went deep on the setting's realities, particularly the position of women in that world:

"Learning about those complexities became one of the most exciting parts of the process."

Director Abel Góngora, meanwhile, had his Japanese cast performing lines in Mongolian so the audience would feel exactly as lost as the heroine does:

"It was a challenge having the Japanese actors also do lines in Mongol."

That's the level of care on display, and it's being watched by roughly the same number of people who read terms of service. The show's only flaw is its audience size. Fix that. It's the one letdown on this list you can personally resolve tonight.