Yaiba's second season gets 9 January 2027 and a new look

The Yaiba anime will return on 9 January 2027. The series' website published the second season's main visual and broadcast details on Saturday, naming the new run the Kaguya arc and putting it back in the Saturday 17:30 slot on the Yomiuri Television and Nippon Television nationwide network.

The date is confirmed as Saturday 9 January 2027, with the usual qualifier that some regions are excluded and that the timeslot can move for scheduling reasons. No international streaming plan was published alongside it, so there is nothing to say yet about when the arc reaches viewers outside Japan.

What the new visual shows

The artwork puts Yaiba and Onimaru back to back with the Raijinken and Fūjinken crossed between them, and carries two taglines: that the true power crosses, and that an invader has come from the moon. Kaguya is the moon's ruler, woken from a thousand years of sleep and armed with a fan that lets her overwhelm both of the series' leads, and the site gives her to Ami Koshimizu. Her aide Tsukikage, who commands her army and collects the extract she is said to live on, is played by Kōki Uchiyama.

The same studio, one season later

Minami Takayama returns as Yaiba, with Manaka Iwami as Sayaka Mine and Yoshimasa Hosoya as Onimaru Takeshi. WIT STUDIO animates, with Studio Kurm assisting, Takahiro Hasui directing, Tōko Machida on series composition and Yoshimichi Kameda as character designer and chief animation director. Yutaka Yamada and Yoshiaki Dewa share the music. The first season began in April 2025 and streamed on Netflix and ABEMA, so the second arriving in the same slot on the same network is continuity rather than a relaunch.

Why the arc name matters

Gosho Aoyama's original manga is a children's adventure that turns steadily stranger as it goes, and the Kaguya arc is where the series stops pretending to be only about sword schoolyard rivalries and starts putting a moon kingdom with an appetite for young women in front of its hero. It is a real escalation in stakes and in content, which makes the 17:30 family slot worth watching as much as the animation.

Our opinion

Yaiba is the rare reboot that earned a second season by being faithful rather than clever, and the Kaguya arc is where that patience gets tested. The visual sells a moon invasion and a villain who drains people, in a slot that also serves six-year-olds on a Saturday afternoon, and the show's charm so far has been that it plays its absurdities straight instead of winking at them. If WIT STUDIO keeps that deadpan nerve, this is going to be the season where Yaiba stops being the nostalgia pick and starts being the appointment. If it softens the arc to fit the timeslot, the audience that turned up for the first season will notice immediately — and they are the ones who made a second season possible.