In Case You Missed It
“The Cel Block's Best from January 2026”
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post contains affiliate links — if you click and buy, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
January 2026 ran wide at Pinned Up Ink. Thirteen pieces went up across The Cel Block. The range says a lot about where anime sits right now: an honest extrovert-meets-introvert rom-com; a polyamorous yuri coming-of-age; a gentle isekai built around a hospital-bound teenager; a Toei oddity from 2013 that still doesn't have a peer; a dance series Madhouse couldn't quite stick the landing on; a harem in its fourth season that's practically a meme; a Kyoto Animation gag piece that hit harder than anyone expected; a spy-family comedy that earned its hype; a 2015 dragon harem nobody needed; a meta book-curse film; a Spring 2026 magic-school preview; and two flat-out disasters we called for what they were. Some earned their praise. Some absolutely did not. This is your second pass at the month, in case you missed anything the first time.
The month opened on January 2 with Sunrise's 2009 sci-fi misfire, The Girl Who Leapt Through Space. Twenty-six episodes set in the year 311 of the Orbital Calendar, the show drops directionless heiress Akiha Shishidou into a colony-spanning mess involving a brain-colony AI named Leopard, a mysterious girl named Honoka, and an Inter-Colony Police officer who probably should have been the protagonist. The review was blunt: the story plays like a string of unrelated absurdities held together only by the cast, and Akiha is a self-serving, thick-headed lead whom the plot keeps rewarding for no clear reason. What landed was Leopard—focused, the only character behaving with intent—along with Kannagi Itsuki, whose martyr streak at least gives her something to do. The 2009 Sunrise art holds up, the colony backdrops are inventive, and VA MAKO deserves credit for fully committing to a maddening character. Everything else gets buried under aimless plotting. Our scathing piece on Sora Kake Girl lays it out.
From there, we pivoted to a Fall 2025 disaster that hurt much more. One Punch Man Season 3 was posted on January 4, and there was no soft landing. J.C.Staff inherited the Monster Association arc—Garou's slow corruption, the S-Rank heroes finally getting real exploration, and the chaos around the Hero Association kidnapping—and gave it almost no animation to work with. Garou became the emotional anchor, a Hero Killer with too much humanity for the path he's being shoved down, and seeing Atomic Samurai, Zombieman, Flashy Flash, Child Emperor, and Metal Knight get real screentime should have been the win. Instead, the season earned the "One Slide Man" nickname for refusing to draw anything in motion, including basic walking. Coloring went lazy, the monsters arrived as unmoving slop, and even JAM Project featuring BABYMETAL on the OP couldn't survive the visuals around it. Murata Yusuke's manga keeps reaching new heights; the adaptation gave us still frames. Our full Season 3 autopsy covers why the disappointment is, in Saitama-speak, immeasurable. The manga, illustrated by Yusuke Murata, is where the story shines—start from Vol. 1.
The month brightened on January 6 with two pieces aimed at very different audiences. The first was Whoever Steals This Book, the Kagokan-animated film adapted from Nowaki Fukamidori's novel that landed in Japanese theaters on December 26, 2025. Mifuyu Mikura is a high schooler who hates books, even as her family runs Mikura Hall, the private library her distant grandfather founded. When stolen volumes trigger an old Book Curse and begin rewriting reality, she has to enter each stolen world to chase down the thief. The hook is exactly what it sounds like: each book carries its own aesthetic, giving Kagokan license to shift styles dramatically—comparisons to Flip Flappers and Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi feel earned. With Daisei Fukuoka directing, Michiru Ōshima composing the music, and YUKI performing the theme song "Share," the production lineup is impressive. Our breakdown of this meta-fantasy adaptation gets into why it rewards watching with a creator's eye.
Also on January 6, we released our preview of LIDEN FILMS' spring 2026 magic-school entry, The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch. Adapted from Yōsuke Kaneda's manga—yes, the Boarding School Juliet guy—back on his secret-partnership beat, the series follows Spica Virgo, an apprentice witch with zero magic ability who strikes a covert master-apprentice pact with a talking black cat who happens to be her cursed idol, Professor Claude Sirius. The April premiere hits the late-night "Agaru Anime" block across 28 stations; ASCA's OP "Cusp" is lined up, and the Zodiac-based class roster gives the ensemble a hook older fans will recognize from Saint Seiya and late-90s JRPGs. The preview was honest about its angle: the series is comfort food for viewers who remember gambling on random VHS magic-school OVAs, dressed up with a polished committee and a real cast. The mentor-and-apprentice core, the "fallen prodigy" trope, the rule-breaking intimacy buffered by the cat curse—it all hits differently in midlife than in middle school. Our Spring 2026 preview of this LIDEN FILMS project lays out why it might earn a slot on your calendar.
January 11 brought one of the month's harshest reviews: Unlimited Fafnir, the 2015 Diomedéa adaptation of Tsukasa's light novel. The setup has bones—an all-girls academy called Midgar, full of "D" girls who manipulate dark matter; mysterious dragons from another plane; and the lone male D, Yuu Mononobe, forced into a harem he didn't ask for, including long-lost sister Mitsuki. None of it lands. The narrative ignores its own mysteries, fumbles with the male lead in ways even High School DxD managed to avoid, reduces its female cast to a handful of recognizable tropes with no other defining traits, and arrives at an open ending that satisfies no one. The 2D moe art is fine, and a few fights are animated cleanly, but the dragons are pure CGI set against a backdrop that can't carry them; the OP and ED are interchangeable with a thousand others, and the OSTs left no impression. A show that confuses tropes for character work and hopes you won't notice. Chapter and verse live in our look at this skippable 2015 harem.
January 17 brought the month's biggest surprise and our most enthusiastic recommendation. City the Animation—Kyoto Animation's Summer 2025 adaptation of Arawi Keiichi's manga, the one that invites instant comparisons to Nichijou—became one of those shows whose tone shifts because it earns them. Midori Nagumo refuses to grow up after college; Niikura is the photographer-in-progress who keeps getting dragged into her schemes, and Wako Izumi rounds out the trio with her airheaded camera habit. The series isn't selling a hook. It's selling presence: adults in apartments, silly conversations, sunsets, dogs, and the entire cake from the bakery. The piece praised episodes 5 and 13 as some of the most creative half-hours to hit screens lately, noted how KyoAni packed every frame with detail without relying on budget muscle, and admitted to tearing up during heartfelt moments nobody expected from a gag comedy. Riho Furui's "Hello" OP got the love it deserved. No real reservations—this one earned the unreserved recommendation. Our piece on KyoAni's everyday masterpiece is worth the revisit. The source manga, CITY Vol. 1, is worth picking up on its own terms.
On January 19, we tackled the single most-debated franchise in the harem space: Rent-a-Girlfriend Season 4. TMS Entertainment is now four seasons deep into Kazuya Kinoshita's pathetic spiral, with Season 5 already on the books. The Paradise Arc was supposed to escalate; the review framed it as filler with sexual innuendo dressed up as romance—fake relationship, real feelings, forced misunderstanding, more misery, and repeat. What made the piece notable was the honesty about the appeal: this is a series people hate-watch, the meme about transferring Denji's suffering onto Kazuya gets a knowing nod, and Miyajima Reiji has openly said the characters left his control long ago. The art and animation are genuinely impressive, especially the girls' wardrobes, the hair work, and the water effects that keep getting more polished season over season. Ruka Sarashina still deserves better than she's getting, and ClariS's OP "Umitsuki" almost tricks you into hoping for development. Kazuya, though, is masculinity in reverse, and after four seasons, the indecision isn't comedy anymore—it's just discomfort. Our Kanokari S4 review breaks down the peak-cringe season. If the anime's got you hate-watching, the manga goes harder.
January 20 took us somewhere kinder but more uneven with Wandance, the Madhouse and Cyclone Graphics co-production based on Coffee's still-running manga. Kaboku "Kabo" Kotani is a self-conscious stutterer who'd rather hide than be seen, but watching Hikari Wanda dance freely pushes him into Ichiran High's dance club anyway. The piece praised the realism of Kabo's growth, the choreography work that clearly involved actual industry pros, and the way the 2D animation flows when jarring CG dance sequences aren't interrupting it. BE:FIRST's "Stare In Wonder" OP grew on the reviewer over time. The "It's time to Wandance" moments hit. Honest criticisms too—the show takes until episode 8 to fully gel, predictable sports-anime tropes telegraph themselves, and the CG remains an adjustment. Not revolutionary, but worthwhile for the right viewer, and Kabo and Wanda are adorable together. Our Wandance review on dance, anxiety, and self-expression goes deeper.
The Toei deep cut hit on January 24 with Kyousou Giga, Matsumoto Rie's 2013 ten-episode oddity that still has few peers. The story orbits a monk named Myoue whose drawings come to life, his black-rabbit-in-human-form wife Koto, their three children, and the Looking Glass City the family flees into when his work draws too much heat from the high priest. When the parents vanish, the siblings inherit the city until a young human girl named Koto literally falls from the sky carrying a giant hammer and looking for them. The review embraced the chaos: the show throws you in without explanation, rewards you for catching small details, and propels itself with intentional, restless pacing. Yase, Kurama, and young Myoue all earn real arcs, and the simplified-color worldbuilding (with unimportant characters rendered as colored blocks) doubles as a thematic statement about this mirrored Kyoto. The honest caveat was the timeline — the show jumps between past and present mid-episode and trusts you to follow. Tamurapan's "Koko" OP was the standout sonic choice. Apply the three-episode rule, then commit. Our Kyousou Giga review on Toei's bold experiment makes the case.
January 25 brought In the Land of Leadale, the Maho Film adaptation of Ceez and Tenmaso's light novel, which aired on Tokyo MX in early 2022. The setup hits harder than the cozy aesthetic suggests: Keina Kagami is a permanently disabled girl living on life support, using the VRMMORPG Leadale as her only window to the world. When her support fails during a session, she dies and wakes up inside Leadale as her elven avatar, Cayna, 200 years after her last login, with her old gaming tutor, Opus, having bound her consciousness to the game's matrix. In-game, she sits at level 1,100, one of twenty-four Limit Breakers and the third of thirteen Skill Masters, known across the kingdoms as the Silver Ring Witch. The review treated the show as a slice-of-life fantasy rather than a high-stakes isekai, which is the right read—Cayna carries the whole thing, and her three NPC adopted children, Mai-Mai, Skargo, and Kee, function more like quest NPCs than party members, which is the main critique. What worked was the art and sound—CGI strong for the genre; a visual style that flexes between vibrant and muted; and Azusa Tadokoro's ED "Hakoniwa no Kōfuku" closing things gently against TRUE's "Happy Encount" OP. If a low-stakes isekai that knows what it is sounds good, our Leadale review is worth a return visit.
The yuri piece dropped January 30—There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless…, also known as Watanare, the Studio MOTHER adaptation of Mikami Teren's light novel, aired in summer 2025, with a five-episode TV special sequel on January 1, 2026. Renako Amaori is socially anxious, autistic-coded, and trying to reinvent herself at a high school where nobody knows her until model-classmate Mai Ouzuka confesses to her front and center. The central praise was how the show handles boundaries and consent not as comedic gimmicks but as real situations characters have to work through and correct. The implied connections between the harem girls beyond Renako were noted as a refreshing structural choice, and the quieter examination of emotionally absent parenting through small details gave Renako an extra dimension. The art is faithful to the source with delicate linework; the animation hits during the kiss sequences; Akari Nanawo's "Muri Muri Shinkaron" OP is catchy; and Nakamura Kanna's performance as Renako is one of the year's standouts. Our Watanare review on this poly yuri harem gets into why it landed even for someone who isn't normally a harem viewer.
The first-impressions piece followed on January 31 with You and I Are Polar Opposites—Lapin Track's twelve-episode Winter 2026 adaptation of Agasawa Koucha's Shounen Jump+ manga. Based on the first two episodes, the verdict was clear: the show moves. Suzuki Miyu, the bubbly hyper-talker, and Tani Yuusuke, the quiet boy who treats everyone the same, are already a couple by the end of episode two—no protracted drama, no will-they-won't-they grind. The piece appreciated the pacing, the supporting cast that pushes the couple forward rather than generating manufactured chaos, the muted palette punctuated by Suzuki's standout pink hair, and the chibi reactions that do real comedic work. The OP "Megane wo Hazushite" by noa got specific praise for its phone-camera visual conceit. No real complaints, the voice performances sell every line, and nothing drags it down. Our first impressions of this Winter 2026 rom-com cover the full read.
Rounding out the month, we revisited Spy x Family through a broader lens—review, character work, and the case for why it's a must-watch. Tatsuya Endo's series, directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi with character designs by Kazuaki Shimada and Kyoji Asano and music by (K)NoW_NAME, set its bar high in 2022 and has kept pace: 25 episodes across Season 1, twelve in Season 2, Season 3 premiering in October 2025, and the CODE: White film expanding the global reach. The piece focused on Yor Forger—the Thorn Princess, the assassin who casually offers her targets "the pleasure of terminating their life"—and the dynamic she forms with Loid and Anya, the Esper daughter who knows everything they don't. Six standout episodes got specific call-outs: the proposal in episode 2, the Eden Academy interview in episode 4, the castle silliness in episode 5, the friendship scheme in episode 6, Yuri's chaotic visit in episode 8, and the dodgeball parody in episode 10. "Mixed Nuts" by Official Hige Dandism and Gen Hoshino's "Comedy" ED both got their credit. The family that started as a cover slowly became a real one in the pitch, and the show delivers. Our Spy x Family review on what makes it work makes the case if you missed the train. If you're not reading the manga yet, Vol. 1 is the place to start.
Looking back, January 2026 read like a month built for honest takes. The Cel Block isn't trending toward fluff or universal pans—it's settling into something more useful: a place where a Kyoto Animation gag piece can earn an unreserved rave the same week a J.C.Staff legacy property gets called out for "One Slide Man," and a polyamorous yuri series gets praised for doing the work on consent. At the same time, a four-season harem gets dragged for refusing to evolve. The throughline across all thirteen pieces was a willingness to look at each show through its own production context first—the studio history, the source material, the staff lineage, and the genre conventions it works within—before bringing any Western lens to the table.
That's the Gen X read on this medium working as intended: respect the production team, give credit where it's earned, and don't let an industry-standard release coast on nostalgia. As the weather warms up and spring wraps up, we figured it was the perfect time to circle back to some cooler treats in case you missed them. If anything from this month caught your eye on the second pass, go back and read the originals properly. Keep The Cel Block bookmarked, because we're not slowing down.
If you've made it this far, consider subscribing to the Pinned Up Ink newsletter — it’s where we go deeper, drop early takes, and keep the conversation going between posts.
And if you want to help keep this kind of independent anime coverage alive, consider supporting us over on Ko-fi. Every cup of coffee keeps the blog running and the archives growing.
