Of the Crunchyroll dark fantasy anime about the trials and tribulations of raising a child on the battlefield set to air this year, Clevatess was one of our favorites for its odd-couple premise and killer retro anime vibes. And as fate would have it, the folks behind the show were at Anime Expo to talk about the first season ahead of the second season’s premiere, which is streaming now on Crunchyroll. Clevatess, animated by Lay-duce, follows Alicia, a recently deceased great hero slain by an all-powerful beast she and her party were charged with vanquishing. Much to her chagrin, Alicia is reanimated by the eponymous beast, who now walks the Earth as a human named Clen rather than in his giant, multi-tailed beast form. His reasoning for bringing back the great warrior is mostly a lark: He wants her to help him raise a princeling he kidnapped from the nearby kingdom he just sacked to see how the little guy turns out. The show’s first season was full of fantastical battles, both death-defying and hilariously unserious, and its second season looks to send their dynamic to school. At Anime Expo 2026, io9 spoke with Clevatess director Kiyotaka Taguchi, Lay-duce animation producer Seiichiro Kuriyama, and Kadokawa producer Kosuke Arai about how the dark fantasy anime got its winning retro veneer, balances its dark fantasy meets comedic tone, and how it landed its surprising ending theme by Ellie Goulding.