An anime series localized in English as The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten aired for 12 episodes in the winter 2023 season. I previously wrote a full review of the first season and included it as an honorable mention in my ranking of the top-six TV anime shows of 2023. In this article, I will cover two new teaser trailers for the upcoming second season of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, which is scheduled to begin airing in April 2026. Before my preview, however, I will tell the story of how my previous coverage of the first and second seasons came to be.
Note: The first part of this article is self-referential, wherein I discuss my prior coverage of the series to explain why I am writing this post. I reach the two trailers (with links) after that and my season one summary. Feel free to use the table of contents to hop around if you are so inclined.
My Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten Anime Coverage History
I watched the series as it aired, publishing an article about its ending theme song during its run. Having published an article about its ending song, which proved to perform surprisingly well (compared to my expectations) according to our local page visit counting solution at the time, I decided to write a full season review, which I published on March 30, 2023. That review was also relatively successful in terms of attracting visitors, so I decided to publish an article that November about the announcement of a second season, which came a few months after the conclusion of the first season.
Before continuing, I submit for your consideration that while my second season article was prompted by the official news announcement of a second season, I wrote the article as a joke. The joke requires a little bit of context, which I sent forth below.
- I predicted at the time I wrote my review of season one of Angel Next Door that there would be a second season (I noted the prediction in my review). My hunch turned out to be correct.
- Back in August 2021, I had written about hair color in Kimi ni Todoke, an anime which had at that point seen its last episode in 2021. I had no reason to believe that there would be new episodes of Kimi ni Todoke when I wrote about it. It was on my mind in 2021 because I had only gotten around to watching the first two seasons (2009-11) in 2021.
- Netflix picked up Kimi ni Todoke in late 2022, which led to an unexpected bump in interest for my 2021 article – notably peaking in January and February of 2023. I noted this discovery in a short post.
- In September 2023, the very unexpected third season of Kimi ni Todoke was announced. Note again that I had no reason to believe there would be a third season when I wrote about it in 2021. I covered this surprise at the time. (This did ultimately prove to be good news for my own Kimi ni Todoke article, leading to a jump in visitors in July and August of 2024 (which coincides with the third season being dumped on Netflix)).
- One month later in October 2023, the far less-unexpected second season of Angel Next Door was announced.
I would not have written my short post on the announcement of the second season of Angel Next Door but for the announcement of the third season of Kimi ni Todoke. While my review of the first season of Angel Next Door had done relatively well in terms of attracting visitors, it did not do so well that it would have occurred to me to cover the second season announcement as a regular article without some other prompt. It was the Kimi ni Todoke season 3 announcement which prompted me to write the humorous article on the Angel Next Door announcement, contrasting my real foresight to have covered the first season of the latter with my being caught by surprise with the third season announcement for the former.
My review of the first season of Angel Next Door continued doing well in the immediate aftermath of the season two preview post, topping a weekly ranking for the one-and-only-time in late December and posting its best month in terms of visitors in January 2024, where it checked in with a third place finish (would have been second but for some unusual circumstances involving my essay on doping in cycling). I thought little of the season two preview article until May 2024, when it went from a non-enity for visitors to a second-place finish in the monthly ranking, before doing one better in June and July, taking first place in both months. It ended 2024 having been the most-visited article in June and July, the most visited article for the three-month periods ending in June, July, August, and September, the most-visited in 11 different weeks out of 52, and the third-most visited article overall. Meanwhile, my actual review of Angel Next Door came in a respectable-but-comparatively-modest 16th place in 2024 after having finished 17th in 2023 (it is worth noting that my review of the first season accrued more visitors in January 2024 than the second season preview managed in any single month).
I submit that this was not my plan. I would have much prefered my actual review of the first season to have been more popular, not the short joke article lamp-shading my foresight in writing the first season article. But things do not always go as planned, and my first season review is prominently linked in the joke article, so perhaps it helped a little bit. (As of this publication, the season one review has been performing slightly better than the joke article as of late, although neither has threatened the top of the ranking since the joke article surged in January 2025 with the official announcement of season two.)
Prefatory Notes On My Season 2 Preview
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten is based on a light novel series. The light novel series is being published in English. Note that I have not read the novel series and have no information from the novels about what will transpire in the second season of the anime. People who are familiar with the novels may already know what will happen in season two of the anime. My preview will be based entirely on my knowledge of the first TV season and my impressions of the teaser trailers.
While I usually write my reviews in a largely spoiler-free manner, I will write about the second season assuming that readers are familiar with the first season and my 2023 review. There is no reason why anyone would watch the second season without being familiar with the events of the first (whether through watching the first season or having read the source material), so this article does not demand spoiler restraint. If you have not watched the first season and are unsure if you want to, my detailed review is safe to read. If you are interested in reading this article but most likely not going to watch the first season, my first season review combined with my forthcoming notes should offer enough context to follow along.
Recapping the First Season
This section presupposes that readers are familiar with my mostly spoiler-free summary of the first season from my review article (see summary section). Similarly, I will presuppose that readers are familiar with the review section of my article, where I opined on Angel Next Door’s strengths and weaknesses (see review section). There are two reasons I am incorporating my original spoiler-sensitive review by reference: (1) I do not want to re-invent the wheel; and (2) I wrote my first season review immediately after watching whereas now more than two years have elapsed since I last watched (I may re-watch parts of it prior to the second season since I will be watching with the intention to write a new review article). Below, I will offer additional insights free of spoiler concerns in light of my permissive position on spoilers in the context of this season two preview post.
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten is centered on the budding romance between Amane Fujimiya, a high school student who lives alone, and his classmate Mahiru Shiina, who not only likewise lives alone, but also happens to be Amane’s next-door neighbor (unbeknownst to them prior to the events of the first episode). Amane is the primary view-point character but Mahiru is functionally the co-main character. As I discuss in the longer review, their relationship begins when Amane lends an umbrella to a depressed Mahiru who is sitting outside in the rain, and Mahiru is determined to repay a surprisingly (to her) reluctant Amane for his good deed.
This highly convenient set-up sets the stage for their friendship and budding romance. Amane buys ingredients, Mahiru makes dinner, and they spend their evenings together having dinner, talking about life, and occasionally engaging in wholesome activities such as playing video games, shopping for groceries, or buying the other a present. Their relationship for most of the show falls somewhere between playing house and cosplaying as a married couple.
Romance is dismissed at the beginning of their arrangement by Mahiru, and Amane does not object (in fact, Amane could be described as excessively sensitive about Mahiru doing anything that could give the wrong impression). They also keep their status as neighbors and friends secret from others. For the bulk of the show, the only people who learn about the arrangement are Amane’s parents, with whom he has a good relationship despite his living alone, and Amane’s only two friends other than Mahiru, Itsuki Asakawa and his girlfriend Chitose Skirakawa.
Amane and Mahiru work well together because they soften each other’s sharp edges. Amane is lethargic and has self-confidence issues stemming from having been bullied at his previous school, which prompted his living alone and attending a different school with his parents’ approval. Mahiru comes to appreciate Amane and encourages him to take better care of himself, whether that involves taking care of his appearance, grades, or home. Lest this show be nothing more than a pure high school-aged male wish fulfillment fantasy, Mahiru must have some reasonable reason for caring about Amane. Mahiru’s reason for living alone is arguably bleaker than Amane’s – her parents never wanted her and do not much care for her (for whatever it is worth, Mahiru’s parents were handled in such an over-the-top way that it rendered the delivery of Mahiru’s unfortunate circumstances ineffective). Mahiru’s parental issues inspired her drive to be perfect in public and her tendency to keep people at a distance. In Amane, she finds someone who genuinely appreciates her as a person and gives her a space where she can let her guard down, be herself, and even confide in someone else about her problems.
In my original review, I wrote: “Without spoiling the particulars, I note that The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten ends in a decisive manner, resolving the core issues of its 12 episode run by the finale.” By this I intended to convey that Amane and Mahiru do enter into a relationship by the very end of the first season, although I will soften “decisive manner” in my new assessment.
There is never much doubt from the first episode and the show’s premise that Amane and Mahiru will end up together (although was not always clear that they would within the confines of 12 episodes), even granting that they get off to a rocky start and are committed to the no romance bit. One would have trouble denying that there is something extra to their feelings by the time the show hits the mid-way point. We see an initially subtle and increasingly unsubtle shift in the second half of the show in Mahiru. She takes on the role as the romantic protagonist in trying to undo her original no-romance understanding with Amane and irrevocably changes their status quo. Mahiru’s responses to being scolded by Amane for perhaps inadvertently leading him on transmogrify from her being embarrassed or denying any such intent to some version of what if I am?
I wrote in the 2023 review:
The series requires the viewer to understand Amane’s inhibitions because those inhibitions are central to how he approaches his relationship with Mahiru. An improper understanding of Amane would lead the viewer to incorrectly conclude that, in the later stages of the anime, he is unimaginably dense. (Amane ultimately disabuses viewers of that notion in a clear and concise way.)
One thing Angel Next Door does well as it approaches its season one climax is handling Amane humanely and with appropriate subtlety. The latter point is a pleasant surprise since one of my critiques of the show is that it sometimes engages in what I call two-by-four story-telling, wherein it operates under the assumption that merely showing the audience is not enough without also telling the audience. Amane is not dense about what Mahiru is trying to do in the second half of the show. He perceives that she is trying to nudge him into making a move toward romance. But despite his obviously being attracted to Mahiru, he is unable to accept her invitation for multiple intersecting reasons, namely his low self-evaluation, his very high opinion of Mahiru, his unwillingness to do anything that could spoil his relationship with the “angel” who spoils him rotten, and more generally the fact that his only relationship with romance is observing the easy-going relationship of his friends Itsuki and Chitose. Prior to the end, Mahiru is content with nudging Amane instead of cornering him. The writers do well to keep Amane’s internal monologues silent on the issue, thus cleverly presenting him as Mahiru sees him while preserving his status as the view-point character.
Mahiru is patient with Amane given the set-up, but her patience proves to be limited. Her growing efforts to change her relationship with him reach a boiling point in the final episode, which features a school sports festival (a popular event in school anime). Mahiru takes advantage of a scavenger hunt event that she manipulates (with an assist from Chitose) to fetch Amane as “someone dear to me” in front of their class and the school at large. This final escalation is a clever trick on Mahiru’s part, evincing her understanding of Amane and the ground rules that she had set in the first episode. Had she simply told Amane that he was dear to her over dinner, something they both had previously admitted to each other in various forms, he could have maintained the plausible deniability he was using to deflect her advances and maintain the status quo. However, Mahiru cornered Amane with the public nature of her thinly-veiled confession of love. By revealing her feelings for Amane to their peers, she detonated the arrangement they created early in the show that she and Amane had reached to keep their status as friends and neighbors secret and, by extension, their understanding that their relationship would not be romantic. Moreover, Mahiru’s public stunt was designed to deal with Amane’s self-loathing in a decisive way. If Mahiru was willing to announce to everyone that Amane was dear to her, he could no longer use as an excuse that he was not good enough for her or that people would think less of her if they knew she was partial toward him. Mahiru’s surprise quasi-confession had the intended effect of forcing Amane’s hand.
Upon returning home, Mahiru half-jokingly apologized to Amane — who had spent the remainder of his day fielding questions about his relationship with Mahiru — for playing dirty and deliberately putting him in an awkward situation, but also spelled out why she had determined she needed to do something dramatic to get through to the boy who had been dodging the issue by pretending to be dense. Amane admitted the obvious, that he had romantic feelings for Mahiru (this, despite his inhibitions, was never much in doubt), and he acknowledged why he had been afraid to act on his feelings. With everything out in the open, Mahiru and Amane agree to start dating, punctuating the momentous event with a hug. With the upcoming second season, we can say that the first season concluded with the end of the beginning.
My Overall Assessment of Season One
My overall impression of Angel Next Door is generally positive, and I think it mostly—albeit not entirely—transcended its initial male wish-fulfillment fantasy premise (note that I have also reviewed anime romances with first-impression female wish-fulfillment fantasy premises, most recently Honey Lemon Soda, a fact which I note only to say that the wish fulfillment anime is not a solely male protagonist-driven phenomenon). On the whole, however, it grades out as decently placed on the right side of average rather than as a stand-out piece.
Among its demerits: The writing in the first half is shaky due to the show’s unwillingness to trust the audience, and the animation and cinematography are lacking, putting heavy pressure on the script and story to do all of the heavy lifting. Also, save for Mahiru’s parents, who are so comically awful that it lessens the effect of Mahiru’s backstory, the few prominent side characters, namely Amane’s parents, friends, and one classmate, are largely reduced to being nothing more than cheerleaders for getting Amane and Mahiru together or otherwise are there to give Amane a little push. The issue is especially glaring in the case of Amane’s friends Itsuki and Chitose since one could envision a bigger role for them not only with respect to Amane, but also for the sometimes-standoffish Mahiru on account of her growing friendship with Chitose.
Previewing the Second Season
I was prompted to write this article because I discovered through my Anime News Network feed that Project No. 9, the studio behind the first and second seasons, had released two teaser trailers along with the April 2026 start date. Before we get to those, let us examine the staff.
From a June 27, 2025 report on Anime News Network about the announcement of an April 2026 premier for season 2:
Chihiro Kumano (The Mononoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei) is directing the second season at project No.9, taking over Li Hua Wang. Keiichirō Ōchi (Adachi and Shimamura, The Quintessential Quintuplets) was in charge of the series scripts. Takayuki Noguchi (Queen’s Blade: Rebellion, Cinderella Nine) adapted Hanekoto’s original character designs for animation. Moe Hyūga (O Maidens in Your Savage Season, Steins;Gate 0) composed the music.
The change in director is notable. The report notes that the new director, Chihiro Kumano, recently directed The Monoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei. That show, like many other shows from the summer 2025 season, is on my to-watch list, and I will give it a go before the end of the year. She did not previously serve as director of any other TV series and I have only seen a few of the shows where she was on staff (notably for NLJ readers My Love Story With Yanmada-kun at Lv999 and Kaiju No. 8, both of which received some coverage on site). As a result, I do not have much feel for her work. The rest of the staff remains unchanged but I will note that The Quintissential Quintuplets is not terrible (and even, on occasion, entertaining) despite a dumb premise (hat tip to Mr. Ōchi for the script) and O Maidens in Your Savage Season has a good sound-track despite not being a good show in my humble estimation.
With the fundamentals settled, let us move on to the teaser videos.
Teaser Trailer 1
I was referred to the 2026 teaser trailer by the June 27, 2025 Anime News Network report quoted above. The video runs just 38 seconds and is available on YouTube with subtitles in eight languages (we will be going with English). You can watch for yourself as you read my expert analysis.
The video is narrated by Mahiru, and the theme is aptly set by her opening line:
Girls can become angels or little devils around someone they really like.
The rest of her dialogue continues in that vein, where she discusses how much she loves Amane and how he is a “dummy,” which to me suggests that their new romantic entanglement will not change everything. The trailer includes the following scenes:
- Amane and Mahiru embrace in an empty classroom lit by the fading afternoon sun, with Mahiru practically glowing with happiness. See the screenshot at the top of the article.
- Amane and Mahiru sitting on the couch where they spent 70% of the first season, with Mahiru in her pajamas tugging on Amane’s t-shirt sleeve while looking bashful. (Could be bed though, hard to say.)
- Amane and Mahiru holding hands while walking to school.
- In what looks to be a continuation from the scene before, Mahiru embraces Amane (maybe she’s sick again).
- Amane emerges from the bathroom not wearing a shirt, and the alleged “little devil” Mahiru looks shocked.
- Amane and Mahiru hold hands on a train platform in non-school clothes and Amane says “Shall we go home now, Mahiru?”
- Amane and Mahiru snuggling together in bed(?) but not kissing. See the screenshot above.
The first season of Angel Next Door was a chaste anime. Despite Mahiru’s “little devil” talk (which had been the subject of a substance-free teaser clip not worth covering here), I expect that the second season will be similarly chaste, portraying an idealized romance and leaving some of the more dramatic stuff to high school romance rivals such as Horimiya.
The most interesting aspect of the trailer is the strong suggestion that Amane and Mahiru start living together at some point in the second season. To be sure, they spent much of their out-of-school time in the first season hanging out in Amane’s apartment, but they otherwise maintained separate homes (or it may be more accurate to say Mahiru maintained both homes while Amane maintained Mahiru’s mood). I am inclined to assume that they may start de facto living together with Mahiru spending more and more time at Amane’s place without de jure cohabitation, but given Mahiru’s parents’ lack of interest in her affairs and Amane’s parents’ approval of Mahiru, I suppose the de jure scenario is possible.
Teaser Trailer 2
I came across the second trailer in the October 4, 2025 Anime News Network report which prompted me to write and publish this article. This video checks in at a whopping 48 seconds and you can follow along as I provide “expert” analysis.
While the first video was mostly a Mahiru monologue, the second video features Mahiru and Amane exchanging lines, with each talking about how they want the other person to rely on them more and wondering which one is being unfairly spoiled. I opined in my assessment that Amane and Mahiru go well together because they soften each other’s edges and in so doing, push each other forward. That basic idea is enmeshed in some saccharine cotton candy (I know “saccharine cotton candy” is redundant but I wanted to drive the point home) with the angel and spoiled talk, but the “dialogue” in this video is suggestive of carrying the central theme of their playing house in the first season to actually building a home for their relationship in the second. Now for my patented and already famous scene-by-scene breakdown:
- The first scene takes place in the summer (evinced by the harsh summer Sun), with Amane and Mahiru in casual clothes walking and talking while holding hands. Mahiru has a Sun parasol (how very delicate). I also noted that while Mahiru is wearing a sleeveless top, she is wearing long sleeves covering the area from her hand to just under her shoulder, suggesting along with the parasol that she is concerned about the Sun or, alternatively, that she is a big fan of Philadelphia 76ers legend Allen Iverson (personally going with the Iverson theory). See the screenshot at the top of the section.
- The second scene appears to take place at an indoor swimming pool. Mahiru is wearing a hoodie covering her swimsuit and floating on an inner-tune. She kicks water at Amane, who is standing in the pool, and he throws it right back at her. I assume this scene will follow the sunny walk and I suspect that Mahiru’s hoodie of sorts is also for Sun protection (there is Sun coming through the windows of the swimming facility). I do not recall Mahiru being Sun-conscious in the first season but it is possible I am forgetting that detail, conceding that I last watched in April 2023.
- In the next scene Amane and Mahiru are snuggling in bed, with Mahiru asleep on Amane’s shoulder (I doubt she is “Sun-blitzed”). Amane looks at her tenderly before running his hand through her blonde hair ((1) I hope that they will address her hair color this season; and (2) George Costanza would be happy to know Amane was able to extract his hand from Mahiru’s hair). See next image below.
- Mahiru sitting in Amane’s lap in a bed as he rubs her head.
- Amane in a kimono and Mahiru in a yutaka at what is almost certainly a summer festival.
- Mahiru blow-drying Amane’s hair (credit here to Mahiru since Amane does look better when he cleans up a little).
- Amane and Mahiru embrace on the couch.
- Amane looks at Mahiru as they sit in a train, traveling somewhere. (See end of article.)
My main take-away from trailer two other than wondering if Mahiru burns easily is that Amane and Mahiru will actually be doing stuff and going places in season two instead of just playing house together. We are being promised a swimming outing, a summer festival (there was a festival in season one, however, so that’s not totally new), and a train trip (I assume the scene from trailer one where Amane and Mahiru are on a train platform talking about going home is the end of the trip).
The first trailer highlighted their new home together (setting aside questions about what that means) whereas the second shows them engaging in activities in the wider world.
Third Trailer?
I suspect that there will be at least one more teaser trailer. We have had June and October, so I would expect it to land somewhere in the December-February range (January seems like a good bet).
Hopes For the Second Season
The first season of Angel Next Door just missed out on a spot in my top-six shows of 2023, having been close enough that I had actually started drafting what would have been its short sixth place essay before it was bumped by the last show I watched just before finalizing the ranking, fourth-place BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!. Making a year-end top six can turn on luck: Angel Next Door would have probably been my fifth-choice pick in 2022 but outside the top-six in 2021 and 2024 (by more than one spot in both years).
Another 2023 show that missed my top-six was the first season of The Dangers in My Heart. That one had a second season in 2024 and that second season was my pick for 2024 Anime of the Year. Can we expect a similar leap from Angel Next Door in light of the fact that I did prefer its first season to the first season of Dangers in a vacuum? To answer my own question emphastically: No! But while I do not see anime of the year potential in a second Angel Next Door season (as much as I would love to be surprised), I do see reasons for cautious optimism.
While I expect that the second season of Angel will maintain the feel-good aspects and leisurely pacing of the first, it will fundamentally change in that it will cover Amane’s and Mahiru’s dating instead of avoiding the obvious for the better part of 12 episodes. To be sure, this can be good or bad. Some shows are better when they focus on the relationship instead of the courtship, see for example His and Her Circumstances and Clannad/Clannad After Story. Other shows may have been better off sticking with the courtship, with my favorite cautionary tale being Lovely Complex. In order for Angel Next Door to find itself in the good camp, I would like to see how Amane and Mahiru grow together in a relationship and how it affects how they interact with the outside world, especially at school. Will Amane begin to interact with more than three people and take better care of himself? Will Mahiru loosen up on trying to be relentlessly perfect? Will the show, having raised Mahiru’s familial circumstances, take a step toward allowing her to confront them? These are all things we should expect for an improved season two. Moreover, now that the side-characters should be freed from cheer-leading duty, hopefully we can expect to see some real character development for Itsuki and Chitose and their relationship to and with the main couple.
The second season does carry some downside risk, see for example my qualified disappointment with the second season of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun last year. The aesthetics in the teaser trailer look as middling as what we saw in the first season, which is somewhat disappointing given my understanding that the first season was relatively popular both here and in Japan. We do have some downside risk if the show decides to focus near-exclusively on showing Amane and Mahiru being adorable and engaging in heartwarming activities without doing anything to develop them as characters.
Taken together, I am cautiously optimistic the second season will be an improvement and potentially a solid top-six candidate for 2026, but I do not see in the fundamentals (aesthetics, character, structure, writing) the potential for the sort of zero-to-anime of the year style leap we saw from its 2023 season one contemporary The Dangers in My Heart.
