This summer 2026 is by far the most uniquely diverse season of anime I’ve seen so far.  We have anime from the Meiji era, isekai anime set in the middle east adapted from a 90s manga, many squels of big names like Grand Blue, 100gfs, Tanya, You and I are Polar Opposites, ect, anime set in ancient China.  So may different types of anime, this is truly a strong season.  The hidden Jem I’ve been the most excited about this season is Jaadugar, an anime about a Persian slave girl who gets captured by the Mongol invaders.  I’ll avoid spoilers in this post so read away, but if you’re already sold on this anime, I’d recommend giving the first 2 eps a watch before continuing.

This anime is easily the most unique anime I’ve ever seen.  This art style is completely new to me, it’s not quite ghibli or disney like, but still has a similar fluidity to its animation like ghibli and disney.  There’s a very human kind of feeling to this art style, it’s imperfect, the colors blend together and it looks like it was painted by hand.  This art style doesn’t look super clean like many modern anime, and this kind of art style human imperfection yet beauty is something we haven’t commonly seen since pre-digital anime.

This setting is extremely unique, I can’t name any other anime that take place in 13th century Persia.  And speaking of this setting, it adhears to real life history.  The year and time of invasion and everything lines up with real history.  Anime like this are just wonderful.  It’s like Vinland Saga, it follows real history and has characters who share the name and status of real people in history, yet it’s fictionalized into an original story that can build off of that foundation to deliever a beautifully written tale.

Something else that’s unique about this anime is that unlike other anime that take place in places other than Japan like Vinland Saga, The Apothecary Diaries, or Prism Rondo, we get to experience a full immersion into the setting.  The Persians that we follow talk in Japanese since this is the Japanese dub, however, the Mongolians actually speak in mongolian, they don’t do the thing where all the characters speak Japanese but act like they don’t understand each other.  And they didn’t really get professional Mongolian voice actors for this, they just hired like 3 Mongolian dudes in Japan.  The guy that voices Tolui is name Hyuugo (his stage name at least) who is an ethnic Mongolian from China, then the 2 guys that play the soldiers and stuff are Tamawashi Ichirou, who’s a Mongolian-Japanese guy born in Mongolia and Tamashouhou Manpei who’s fully Mongolian and from Mongolia.  The 2 of them are in Japan and are professional sumo wrestlers, but the production team seems to have gotten them to do a bit of voice acting work too.

Beyond that, the music follows the cultural setting too.  At the start of the anime we have a Persian song as the ost with a guy singing in what I’m guessing in Farsi.  Later on we also get a traditional Mongolian song as the ost featuring Mongolian throat singing.  Having an anime like this using traditional music to match the setting is quite rare and requires a lot of work and international cooperation.  It 100% makes the anime that much better imo.

The story thus far I can’t comment on too much since we just got started with it.  They released the first 2 eps together I’m assuming because they serve as a prequal basically.  The fact that they released it like that alone tells me that the production team of this anime cares much more about making a high quality adaptation over following standard anime practice.  They could have just released ep 2 on week 2 like most anime, but they wanted to keep the 2 prequal eps together for a better viewing experience.  That gives me high hopes for the rest of the anime.

While I am generally familiar with the surface of Persian and Mongolian history, it’s not really something that I’ve studied too heavily.  I’ve done a little learning about both histories, but most of the history I like to study revolves around American history, Taiwanese history, Japanese history to a slightly lesser extent, and a bit of general european/western history and Chinese history, enough to be deeper than surface level but not something I study as deeply as the other topics (though Roman and Greek history is really cool).  But the point is, I’m not really familiar with the history or culture of Persia and Mongolia so a lot of this is pretty foreign to me.  It’s also really culturally different from what I’m used to, and Islam is probably the religion I know the least about and have the least connection to out of the Abrahamic religions, though tbf I’m not really well versed in any of them since I’m not particularly religious.  Probably the religions I’m most familiar with is Buddhism and Daosim, but even then I’m more familiar from a philosophical and traditional standpoint than a religious one.  But yeah it’s interesting.

Also the OP song is really good, it’s quite a banger.  ED’s not as good but it’s alright.

Alright, that’s enough yapping for now, but seriously, this anime is extremely interesting and so far it’s production value has completely impressed me given I haven’t really heard about that anime at all.  I’m absolutely going to continue watching this as it airs, and I’d encourage you guys to give it a shot as well.  I will say, for an anime of this level, I’d recommend making room in your schedule to watch it as it airs, though I do understand this season is absolutely packed with great anime lmao. That’s it for for now, bye