Kimi ni Todoke was a shoujo romance manga series which ran from 2005 through 2017. It received a two-season, 38-episode anime adaptation which aired from 2009 to 2011. As one may imagine from the date mismatch, the first two seasons of the anime only adapted a portion of the manga.
Back in August 2021, I wrote an article about understanding hair color in Kimi ni Todoke (admittedly a niche topic), which did surprisingly well, placing in the top 50 in our 2021 and 2022 rankings and posting back-to-black monthly top-eight finishes in January and February of 2023. The reason for its early 2023 success, which supports its current (as of September 4, 2023) 16th place ranking for the year, was Netflix’s adding the first two seasons of the anime to its catalogue. I covered the new licensing of Kimi ni Todoke in a January Leaflet and gave the first two seasons my qualified recommendation. It has one of the more unique female protagonists (Sawako Kuronuma) in anime and her friends turn out to be endearing, but the second season stagnates and initially undoes much of the progress seen in the first season by frustrating the central romance with increasingly convoluted misunderstandings. Nevertheless, given that season 2 ended in a good place but still very much in the middle of the manga, I opined in my Kimi ni Todoke-Netflix piece:
While the Kimi ni Todoke anime does end well, it also ends before the half-way point of the manga source material. I add it to the list of series that could use a new season.
Apparently someone was listening. Kimi no Todoke season three is slated to air on Netflix in 2024, 13 years after the second season concluded. Here I thought the five-year wait between the second and third seasons of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, my 2015 and 2020 anime series of the year respectively, was unduly long. I am glad to see Kimi ni Todoke receive a third season and I think it is a good choice for a streaming service that has many customers who may be inclined to give it a try despite not being anime fans generally. The third season will return the original cast and presumably pick up where the second season left off. Count me as optimistic, with the caveat that I never read the manga so do not know the quality of what is left of the story or how it will be adapted. I suppose that it is a good time for people to watch the first two seasons (I watched Kimi ni Todoke for the first time in 2021 after having it on my to-do list for years, so it is still reasonably fresh in my mind.)
(Aside: If someone at Netflix is listening, please consider not taking too many series from real anime streaming services. Thank you.)