Summer 2025 anime review shout outs to the yuri-est season to ever do it
Special spotlight to Hotel Inhumans because holy fucking yuri what an unknown and under-appreciated yuri chapter to spring on us from out of fucking nowhere
[Official key art for Hotel Inhumans episode 10. Blonde Danica and dark-skinned Chetana stand in the foreground smiling at each other over a book like the wives they are while the two hotel staff Sara and Ikuro stand in the back against the bookshelves.]
The first episode is... Kind of a weak, sauceless off-brand John Wick with no animation budget compared to the likes of Dandadan knocking it out of the park on every kick or Ruri Rocks spending a small fortune on every small flourish, so it kind of earned the middling scores that people gave the pilot. And I was more than a little annoyed by how lazy the idol song felt on a later episode. But it's got some of them trans-coded themes about being seen as an inhuman monster by society and finding your humanity regardless and choosing your own fate instead of just living and dying a tool used by others.
And then these two. My beloved murder lesbians. After a season of being quietly content to chill with a more slice-of-life perspective they bring out two of the most lesbian, flirtatious characters in all of anime and drench their arc's second episode in romantic love song framing and language. These two occupied my entire brain in the same season as No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover building up to a genuinely emotional climax. I am not normal about how gay they are and how dense the symbolism is around their love in just three episodes so far.
Like I've ranted every so often to friends, it's like Gqux MachuNyaan if the show was actually good (yuri and without the misogyny).
So yeah, about a 4/10 start built up to 6/10 and then finishing the season with a 12/10 (please note that I am an extremely biased lesbian and rating this like 90% on yuriful content). It's an episodic story and there's no real major plot buildup that you need to follow esp since it only has one season (so far) so feel free to jump into eps 10-13 if you want yurimaxxing I think.
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2. Turkey! Time to Strike
This anime is so funny. First it's a slice of life/sports anime pilot fakeout into another genre and then after taking several episodes to explore character arcs and trauma it loops back around to being a bowling anime again (but as battle). Rina in particular hit painfully close to home as I've had to talk a newly transitioned gal through her level and exact flavor of self-hate and worse over the past year or two. It's a really meaty and substantive character study that really cares about its girls and the subject of trauma and it's even got a little bit of actual transgender intersection in there. An easy top tier for this season.
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3. There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless...
People called this slop and weak due to being a weaker comedy than Bad Girl and other peers (and ig they have cause considering it advertises itself as a comedy) but idc
This series understands sheer lesbianism on a visceral absolute level from the physical and erotic, to the emotional need to be seen, to the crushing pressure of being afraid to say it out loud because of violating social contracts and expectations. The anime adaptation built up to a stellar climax with the last arc, and as much of a blue-balls cliffhanger as the last episode is until we get the movie in a month or something, it felt like, emotionally complete as a series. Oh my god how drunk a girl can get on the yuri of that last run. Ten thumbs up.
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4. Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy
Yeah you all know which one this is. This gif was made on tumblr I'm pretty sure and it's already a top result for the anime's title on any gif search/site.
It has far and away some of the most stunning animation of like... a lot of the history of animation, ever. And the material it's adapting really nails it with the slowing down to the pace of the earth and opening your mind to the wonders of the world and yuri between autistic women. Nothing so dramatic as the plot twists of some of the other stuff this season but still top notch eatin's.
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5. CITY the Animation
It's peak
Lots of people have gushed about the insane animation flex and gambit on the tower/town feast episode. And yeah the mangaka is absolutely shipping the two main roommates there's even more explicitly expressed himejoshi language in the source material. But regardless of that it's still a funny show about people and ordinary life and the two chuuni middle school students who will never give it up
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6. Bad Girl
Now here's the gag-a-minute lesbian anime. As jjs put it,
Close enough: That was Watamote, but they skipped straight to the part of the manga where Tomoko becomes a yuri protag surrounded by girls who want her carnally.
Gay as hell, and as funny as everyone says. Fun fact, between this, watanare, and hotel inhumans, that's three animes with explicit love confessions between girls in them (bad girl's is in the OP).
Easily the funniest show this season with an extremely fun cast of weirdo lesbians each trying to out do the other with their own brand of weirdness (like we got all the hits here: girl worshiping her crush like a goddess, girl who sees her stalker as her pet dog, tsundere delinquent with the sharpest tongue imaginable, popular girl who can't get that one weirdo out of her head, predatory lesbian himejoshi.) Probably one of the easiest recommends this season from me.
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7. See You Tomorrow At The Food Court
The other bitingly funny yuri of the season. Well it's not quite Bad Girl "every girl says out loud they're attracted to girls" or Watanare "the entire plot is navigating comphet" or Hotel Inhumans "I love Danica", but especially towards the end they get pretty freaking blatant and open about describing their relationship in romantic terms and in reference and comparison to a boyfriend-girlfriend couple.
Yurimaxxing aside it's just a low stakes slice of life show with just two friends shooting the breeze every day at the food court. The writing and anime make impeccable use of timing to make the most mundane things hit extra fucking funny even in more of a grounded style compared to city/nichijou using exaggerated slapstick to blow up relatable feelings into an anime crisis.
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8. The Summer Hikaru Died
The most deliciously intoxicating slow-burn horror with some of the most viscerally gay scenes outside of actually explicit material. More than a little annoying that the creator and everyone insists that it's Not BL when the mangaka himself says that it's a queer work and the two boys are absolutely gay for each other, since it reeks of that thing of how a thing is inferior and less legitimate if it's a genre enjoyed primarily by girls. Still, that cygames lesbian horse money is funding the most knockout anime productions ever (speaking of which everyone go and watch apocalypse hotel, it's actual peak)
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9. Fermat Kitchen / Fermat Cuisine (Fermat no Ryouri)
yaoi between an innocent puppy protag and the actual most devious of anime villains, complete with the most intense battle framing around the simple act of cooking such that each moment is actually highly suspenseful. The author even makes sure to throw Gaku a whole heap of losses as a regular feature so you never actually feel for sure that he'll make it.
Kind of sucks for those of us who are actually interested since it doesn't seem to have much of an audience for the anime and the manga is nonexistent outside of Japan 🫠
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10. Takopi's Original Sin
One of the actual top tier adaptations ever, it's so perfectly paced with the slow burn and dread that I couldn't wait for the last couple episodes to drop and read ahead to the ending in the manga beforehand. I think it might've deflated the emotional impact of watching the anime to the end personally? but it's still a top notch adaptation of a superbly written story about abuse/trauma and pain and misplaced resentments.
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11. Dandadan season 2
Top tier animation studio puts out another banger season of a transformative adaptation of a top tier shonen series. It's as peak as expected. The fucking insert song they made for the heavy metal exorcism scene debuted at the top of irl music charts for like two weeks and it's absolutely fucking earned.
Plus, they literally wrote an entire English version of the song, so they can just post those lyrics into the subtitles for the Japanese audio and it actually lines up with the beat!
It of course has some of the most knockout fight choreography and animation I've ever seen. Evil Eye's hand to hand is slick as fuck, and the orchestra fight in particular is one of my favorites.
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12. Nyaight of the Living Cat
The biggest miss of the season for me. The animation is cheap like Hotel Inhumans but unlike Hotel Inhumans it didn't have any investment in telling a caring human story to make up for it. Unlike Bad Girl actually being witty and fresh with it, Nyaight seemed content to coast on millennial cat memes and cultural references. Idk it just seemed so, lazy in comparison to the other stuff I watched. It's accurate about the cat lover experience but kind of like only as deep as the "millennial facebook memes" level and not on the deeply invested level of Watanare and scandalous lesbian handholding.
