FX Fighter Kurumi chan Premieres Today on Crunchyroll
The strangest anime of the fall premieres today. FX Fighter Kurumi chan, a cute girl comedy about foreign exchange margin trading, ruin, and the face you make when your broker force closes your position, starts Thursday, October 1, 2026 on Crunchyroll and on AT X, Tokyo MX and BS11 in Japan. It is from Passione and the director of Mieruko chan, and it is based on a manga that Japanese retail traders treat as a horror story. Here is the schedule, the premise, why this exists, the four fighters, and what the trailers actually show.
FX Fighter Kurumi chan release date and where to watch
| Where | When | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AT X | Thursday, October 1, 9:30 pm JST | First broadcast |
| Tokyo MX | October 1, 10:30 pm JST | |
| BS11 | October 1, midnight JST | |
| Kansai TV | October 1, 1:45 am | Episodes 1 and 2 at 1:55 am |
| d Anime Store | October 1 | Earliest Japanese streaming |
| Crunchyroll | October 1 | Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, Middle East, CIS, India. English dub confirmed, date to be announced |
Episode count is not announced. Japanese fan sites assume one cour. The opening and ending, both sung by Aina Suzuki in character as Kurumi, release digitally on October 2.
The premise
Kurumi Fukuga is a 20 year old university student making her FX debut. FX is what Japan calls leveraged foreign exchange trading, betting on currency pairs with borrowed money, and it is enormous in Japan among ordinary people. Kurumi’s reason is not fun. When she was in middle school her mother, a housewife bad with numbers, secretly traded the family’s money and lost 20 million yen, around 126,000 dollars, in the 2008 crash, and took her own life. Kurumi spent high school studying charts instead of having hobbies, got a scholarship, and opened an account on a high leverage overseas broker with 300,000 yen of part time savings. Her plan: win the 20 million back. Easy.
The show follows what actually happens when a beginner with a revenge motive and 20 times leverage meets a live market. Unrealized losses. Margin calls. Forced loss cuts. The teaser visuals came in two versions, a normal one and a “Forced Liquidation” one, and that is the whole tone in one joke. Suzuki called it “super cute but super violent” and said a 0.1 yen move is the difference between heaven and hell.
The four FX fighters
- Kurumi Fukuga (Aina Suzuki): cheerful, pink haired, and the owner of a terrifying margin call face.
- Mochiko Kogane (Asami Seto): a cold academic prodigy already worth over 10 million yen from stocks, who enjoys watching other people lose and nudges Kurumi toward bad trades.
- Mebuki Yamashi (Ayasa Ito): starts trading because she does not want to work, wins on Kurumi’s advice, goes solo on gut feeling, and spirals into debt.
- Yasuko Takane (Miho Okasaki): tiny, childlike, an aspiring designer who quit FX after losing money as an affiliate blogger.
Public story beats from the manga
Kurumi’s careful early scalping works. Mochiko talks her into a volatile pair, she faces a forced loss cut, and she steals 3 million yen of her father’s savings to hold the position. It works, then her father finds out, and she quits. Mebuki’s beginner’s luck under Kurumi’s coaching pulls her back in, and by then she thinks 20 times leverage is “low.” The four run an FX contest. Mebuki loses everything and borrows from Mochiko at 109 percent interest. Yasuko quits. Kurumi goes all in on the Euro against the Swiss franc as her sure thing. If you know what happened to that pair in January 2015, you know where this is going.
Studio, staff and why this got an anime
Passione animates, the studio behind Mieruko chan and the Spice and Wolf remake, and Mieruko chan’s Yuki Ogawa directs. Kenta Ihara writes, Kazuyuki Ueda designs the characters, and Takuro Iga, the composer of Oshi no Ko and Trillion Game, does the music. The manga is by Demunyan, who first posted it as a webcomic in 2016, with art by Daisuki Tansan since Kadokawa picked it up for Monthly Comic Flapper in 2021. It is at 10 volumes as of September 18. Demunyan said the anime “feels like a miracle” and that the story “was born from my overflowing negative energy.”
It got an anime because it became a cult object. On Japanese trading boards, Kurumi is shorthand for blowing up an account. Traders with real losses say the manga makes their chest tighten because the terms and the psychology are accurate. Bloomberg ran a column in January framing the anime as a pink haired successor to “Mrs. Watanabe,” the archetypal Japanese housewife currency trader, at a moment when retail FX is booming again. In 2025 someone even launched an unauthorized Kurumi meme coin, which Demunyan disowned.
FAQ
When does FX Fighter Kurumi chan come out?
October 1, 2026 on Crunchyroll and on AT X, Tokyo MX and BS11 in Japan.
What is FX?
Leveraged foreign exchange trading, betting on currency pairs with borrowed money. It is very popular with ordinary retail investors in Japan.
Is it a comedy?
Yes, but a dark one. The comedy is the gap between the cute art and an accurate depiction of leverage, margin calls and gambling psychology.
Which studio is making it?
Passione, directed by Yuki Ogawa of Mieruko chan.
More on the season in Anime News, and try our character quizzes. Broadcast details via Animate Times and Anime Corner.
My take: The obvious comparison is Kakegurui, and I think that undersells what this is. Kakegurui is gambling as fantasy, a school where the games are invented and the stakes are theatrical. Kurumi chan is gambling as documentary. Everything Kurumi does, the revenge motive, the overseas broker with 20 times leverage, holding a losing position with money that is not hers, the friend who wins twice and thinks she is a genius, is a checklist of how real people actually lose real money, which is why Japanese traders cannot look at it. That is a much braver thing to animate than Kakegurui’s dark faces, and it is also the risk. Passione and Ogawa made Mieruko chan work by playing horror straight under a moe surface, and that is exactly the trick this needs, but Mieruko chan’s ghosts were not something the audience had personally done at 3 am. My worry is Western viewers. Crunchyroll picked this up with an English dub, which says they think it travels, and the WallStreetBets generation is the obvious target. But the show’s second act depends on you understanding why a 109 percent loan from a friend is worse than a margin call, and comedy that requires a glossary usually does not travel. Prediction: a genuine hit in Japan, a cult curiosity abroad, and the one show this season that finance people who do not watch anime will hear about anyway. Also, put the ending song on now. Suzuki singing the currency symbols is going to be stuck in everyone’s head by Halloween.
