The Most Popular Anime in 2020…According to Wikipedia

How can you tell what anime is actually popular? Your Twitter feed is a bubble, curated by people you’ve chosen to show up. Most anime fans don’t use a service like MyAnimeList or AniChart to broadcast what they’re watching, nor are those who do necessarily representative of the broader community. Crunchyroll may be the largest anime service for most of the world, but its own “Popular” ranking doesn’t capture any viewership from anime licensed or watched elsewhere. 

However, our curiosity is more honest — and, potentially, more representative. You can fake interest on a survey or a Discord channel, but if you’ve landed on a Wikipedia page, there must be a certain sincerity to your action. Like a Google search for symptoms or snooping on an ex’s Facebook, when people query Wikipedia, they’re doing it in a semi-private sphere. Today, we’ll be using that candor to count down the most popular anime of 2020 so far…based on page views on the English version of Wikipedia, the web’s 11th most popular website.

Using Wikipedia’s internal tools, your reliable author examined and compared viewership between all 9,848 pages within the website’s “Anime” category, year-to-date as of February 19th. Below, you’ll find the top 10 most-read pages related to anime on Wikipedia by this standard, regardless of how sensical the results may have been. Let’s jump in!

Yusuke Murata (One-Punch Man, Eyeshield 21) Illustrated the cover for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Japanese Home Video Release

10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a sensation, and was inspired by anime as well as coming full-circle to serve as an inspiration to creators in the medium as well. Yoshiyuki Tomino called Spider-Verse “a really weird anime” during a 2019 lecture, but just because the creator of Gundam says so, is this really an anime? A quick “CTRL + F” of the Spider-Verse page indicates that the film was grouped within the category on Wikipedia due to it being included as one of 199 entries listed as an “Anime-influenced Western animation”. So Spider-Verse isn’t really an anime, but since Wikipedia classifies it as such (and so would many of your favorite creators), we’re not going to editorialize this list. Its inclusion speaks to the growing bridge between animators in Japan and overseas, as well as the high level of excitement for the film and anticipation of its sequel planned for 2022, and I for one am thankful this is the one true non-anime page that made the top 10, particularly compared to other contenders like 4chan (Rank 18).

Promotional art for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

9. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

Our next entry is much more closely aligned with anime, but rather than being an anime series or film itself, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is a new video game based on the Dragon Ball manga franchise for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC released just last month. Of the 262 pages directly associated with Dragon Ball on Wikipedia, it makes sense that fans in 2020 would flock to this more than the rest, since Kakarot is the only new adventure of Goku and friends released this year. The parent page of the franchise “Dragon Ball”  is the next most-read page on the list at rank 22, with approximately 4,150 readers every day. Dragon Ball Z and the most recent TV anime, Dragon Ball Super, follow shortly behind.

What’s most impressive to me about Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s spot on this list of Wikipedia’s most popular anime-related pages is not how high it is, but rather, how low in the ranking it’s found. Kakarot was the best-selling video game in the United States for the month of January, and the US makes up more of the English-language traffic for Wikipedia than any other country. Yet, the Kakarot game only gets half the traffic on the platform as the most recent Call of Duty game, which is several months past its peak Wikipedia interest and isn’t moving as many copies in stores. This disparity speaks to the varied reasons one would go to Wikipedia to learn more about a game, but it also may represent the relative staying power of Goku’s latest console outing. 

Momoka, the mascot of FAKKU (NSFW), the largest English-language platform for hentai 

8. Hentai (Warning: This link includes NSFW content)

Hentai, which Wikipedia encourages us not to be confuse with Hentaigana, is defined by the platform as “anime and manga pornography” – at least when the term is used outside of Japan. While not all fans of anime are also compelled by anime pornography, certainly, judging by Wikipedia traffic and Google search data, many are. That said, with a Google search, one would expect most of the queries would be made with the intent to consume hentai content. On the Wikipedia platform, that may not be the case – whether it’s a confused parent or friend, investigating an encyclopedic page for hentai may feel like the safer way to understand the topic. 

Hentai Page Monthly Traffic on Wikipedia

Interestingly, 2019 was the weakest year on record for the Hentai page of Wikipedia – had it continued at its rate from last year, the topic would barely miss a top 15 list of anime pages. But in 2020, there seems to be a resurgence, though with no particular inflection point your author could discover, no major article about the topic that would inspire further curiosity from those not “in the know”. It’s worth noting that popular hentai related terms did not show similar dips in 2019 on Wikipedia, and the largest English-language hentai distributor, Fakku, saw its best year on the platform to date. 

A comparison of international search traffic for the topics “Anime” and “Hentai” via Google Trends 

However, in investigating this strange downturn, I re-discovered something else that I’ve always considered a novelty of data. “Anime” and “Hentai”, as topics, are incredibly strongly correlated on Google search. When one goes up on search, the other follows – and likewise for downturns in traffic. There’s a meaningful exception at the end of 2015, when hentai and its related terms saw a huge drop-off, but that may be more related to Google’s update to the Trends data collection method. That said, it’s hard to argue that anime has outpaced hentai these last five years, and that hentai’s downturn can be found both on Wikipedia and Google. While I don’t believe there’s any less interest in the subject than before, as anime becomes more accessible to broader audiences, and more people are on the internet in general, I would imagine a slightly smaller proportion of those who love anime are also interested in the style applied to pornography now as compared to 10 years ago…but that’s a topic for another day. 

Giorno Giovanna and his stand, Golden Wind from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

7. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Finally, taking the number seven slot on our list is the first actual anime series, and it’s a good one: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. My instinct would be to assume that the meme of “watch jojos” has led many a curious Wikipedia users to this page. While technically this page is the parent page for the manga (and the franchise at large) and not any particular part, the growth in the franchise over the last few years has exploded overseas. 

Starting with the anime adaptation of Part 4, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has transcended from one of the most meme’d anime to one of the most watched. From this author’s perspective, Part 4 represented a critical mass in the English-speaking JoJo’s fandom, where it became just the right size that the unengaged finally relented to watch this crazy anime that had been recommended to them with the intensity of a road roller for years before. Part 5 only ramped up this effect, a much more accessible story for those unfamiliar with the years of mythos that led up to Giorno Giovanna’s adventure in Italy.

There’s no particular cause for JoJo’s high readership on Wikipedia so far this year — no announcement of a Part 6 (sadly), no major shakeups in the manga, no more memes than usual — JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has simply become an unstoppable force in the world of anime, and that’s a good thing by my judgement. The best thing I could ask for, even. Please, watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure on Crunchyroll.

Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro

6. Studio Ghibli

After our first actual anime series of the list, we return to another more meta-relevant anime page with Studio Ghibli, undoubtedly the most famous production house in the industry. Started by Hayao Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata and famous for films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Ghibli has won at the Oscars, won our hearts, and given Miyazaki endless excuses to never actually retire. 

In January, the Studio Ghibli page reached a 4-year high for monthly Wikipedia pageviews due to the announcement that the 21 films previously announced as part of HBO Max’s service at launch in May would also be included on Netflix outside of the United States, Canada, and Japan. According to Comparitech data on subscribers from December 2019, that would mean that even with their top country out of the running, approximately 55% of the service’s subscribers would have access to these beloved films.

The top-performing Ghibli works when it comes to Wikipedia traffic are Spirited Away (rank #18), My Neighbor Totoro (#29), Grave of the Fireflies (#67). Not surprisingly, these are also 3 of the top 5 most-watched films from the studio according to imDB, with Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle ahead of Grave of the Fireflies in the list. 

Various Characters from Interspecies Reviewers 

5. Interspecies Reviewers

Interspecies Reviewers is an anime about a human named Stunk and his friends as they explore the world of prostitution via a series of brothels run by succubi of various fantasy races and species. The series, from its premise, sounds like it has more than enough potential to cross some lines in regards to what is allowed on television…and according to multiple Japanese TV stations and streaming services, that’s exactly what happened. 

On January 31st, Funimation was the first licensee to stop broadcasting Reviewers, stating, “After careful consideration, we determined that this series falls outside of our standards.” Amazon, Wakanim, Tokyo MX, and SUN soon followed suite.

The reaction within the anime community was…vibrant. The news spread quickly— there’s not much better way to draw awarenesses to something than to tell people that they can’t have it. While some fans made the anime a rallying cry for various causes, the interest faded quickly after the engagement on various YouTube videos started to flag. In fact, it’s worth noting that Interspecies Reviewers is not particularly popular on any major pirate site that lists viewership, falling far outside the season’s top 10 on each of the sites sampled by this author. Had this article been written about January traffic alone, Interspecies Reviewers would’ve topped the list, but at the rate Wikipedians are trafficking the page now, it won’t stay in the top 10 for much longer.

Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering with You 

4. Weathering with You

Next on our list is the film Weathering with You. Makoto Shinkai’s visually stunning follow-up to your name. came in #2 last year at the Japanese box office and has since surpassed Aladdin to become the country’s top earner of a film released in 2019. Being able to wrestle anime theatrical dominance from Detective Conan in its native country isn’t enough to get this film onto the top 5 of an English-language Wikipedia-based anime list, though: Weathering with You has been opening in theaters around the world, with its impressive US release on January 15th. 

With $7,710,749 in US box office as of writing, Weathering with You is one of the top-earning anime films in the country in history at #11 not adjusting for inflation, just behind Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ and Digimon: The Movie. Going by the average movie ticket price in North America as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, that means about 846,000 people have gone to see the film in the United States – nearly twice the amount of people who looked it up on Wikipedia.

Thanks to an excellent marketing campaign from the people at G-KIDS and a 90% “Certified Fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes, the hype for Weathering with You was real enough for its Wikipedia page to interest more folks browsing Wikipedia than even a controversy surrounding a fantasy race prostitution rating anime.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Wins the Crunchyroll Anime Awards (via Crunchyroll Germany)

3. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Say “Hello!” to the 2020 Anime Awards winner for Anime of the Year, Best Boy, Best Fight Scene, it’s Demon Slayer! Demon Slayer became one of the most popular franchises in the world of anime and manga in the last year, with its manga breaking sales records, its opening song still topping Billboard Japan, and its unbelievable fan power around the world. 

It’s been nearly five months since the TV series for Demon Slayer ended, but the excitement around the exploits of Tanjiro, Nezuko, and their friends has not slowed down. With an upcoming movie coming soon, it would be surprising to see this franchise lose steam any time soon.

My Hero Academia

2. My Hero Academia

There’s not much to be said about My Hero Academia here; since its second season, the show’s popularity has skyrocketed all around the world, and has only started to slow down recently now that nearly every anime fan out there has given the Weekly Shonen Jump standout a chance. Whether it’s topping Toonami’s viewership numbers or ramping up for its next international theatrical release, it’s hard to imagine My Hero Academia any lower on this list while new episodes are coming out every week!

Alita: Battle Angel Promotional Image

1. Alita: Battle Angel

Last year, audiences around the world were treated to the biggest Hollywood adaptation of a manga to date – Yukito Kishiro’s Gunnm was released as Alita: Battle Angel, a passion project of James Cameron’s that came to life under the leadership of director and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fan Robert Rodriguez. Now, in 2020, the film’s Wikipedia page tops the list of anime-related pages for a second year in a row — thanks to diehard fans.

If you looked at the rankings in January, Alita would still make the top 10, but just barely. However, an online group known as the #AlitaArmy started a kickstarter late last year to get enough funds to fly a plane over the Oscars requesting a sequel to the 2019 film. The quote for the banner was originally $1,810 USD, and all further funds raised were set to go to Open Bionics, a prosthetics company that worked with Fox to help create the look and feel of those featured in the Alita movie with a mission to “make beautiful bionic limbs more accessible.” The #AlitaArmy ended up raising $15,599 as of February 20th, and is in the process of passing along the excess funds to Open Bionics. 

The #AlitaArmy Plane Petitioning for an #AlitaSequel at the 2020 Academy Awards

The airplane’s message was heard loud and clear: outlets from Indiewire to IGN covered the story, and staff and cast alike shared their excitement about the stunt with fans on social media.

John Landau, Producer of Alita: Battle Angel, sharing his support of the fan campaign on Facebook   View this post on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8g-BuKpswF/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

Rosa Salazar, who plays the titular Alita in the film, celebrates the fandom on her Instagram.

It’s incredible to see that a fan campaign was able to both bring such attention to this franchise with a single stunt that Wikipedia traffic for the page even exceeds that of the top airing simulcasts, but if that doesn’t speak to the power of fandom, I’m not sure what does! Alita: Battle Angel was recently added to HBO, HBO Now, and HBO Go, so if you haven’t had a chance yet to see the biggest thing in anime (at least according to Wikipedia), give it a shot! Your author was enthralled by the movie as well, and here’s hoping to an #AlitaSequel!

And that’s our list! I hope you all enjoyed diving into Wikipedia’s analytics to help better understand part of the larger interest around anime. While including all pages, regardless of whether they’re actually a show, studio, genre, or not really anime at all may not have told the specific story you were looking for, I’ve also gone through the effort to collect the top 10 currently-airing anime by Wikipedia pageviews. Enjoy!

 1. My Hero Academia (466,536)

 2. Interspecies Reviewers (428,338)

 3. Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun (213,930)

 4. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (201,656)

 5. BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense (199,691)

 6. One Piece (196,166)

 7. Black Clover (171,645)

 8. Haikyu!! (156,525)

 9. Darwin’s Game (154,975)

 10. Plunderer (123,129)

 Thanks for reading – let me know what you think of the results in the comments below!

Winners of the 2020 Anime Awards

It’s a brand new decade, but the Anime Awards is coming in strong for its fourth year! Stay tuned into the official livestream for all the thrills and excitement of who will come away with the award for all of our categories, including the coveted Anime of the Year!

Don’t worry if you can’t get the connection. We’re listing all the winners as they are announced in this article, so you can know the latest wins as they happen!

Best Character Design: Satoshi Iwataki, Original Character Design by Hiroyuki Asada for Dororo

Best Animation: Mob Psycho 100 II

Best Fight Scene: Tanjiro & Nezuko vs. Rui in DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA

Best Couple: Kaguya Shinomiya & Miyuki Shirogane in KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR

Best Girl: Raphtalia in The Rising of the Shield Hero

Best Boy: Tanjiro Kamado in DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA

Best Opening Sequence (OP)”: “99.9” in Mob Psycho 100 II

Best Ending Sequence (ED): “Chikatto Chika Chikaa♡” in KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR

Best Performance by a Voice Actor (EN): Billy Kametz as Naofumi in The Rising of the Shield Hero

Best Performance by a Voice Actor (JP): Yuichi Nakamura as Bruno Bucciarati in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

Best Fantasy: THE PROMISED NEVERLAND

Best Comedy: KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR

Best Drama: VINLAND SAGA

Best Director: Tetsuro Araki and Masashi Koizuka for Attack on Titan Season 3

Best Score: Mocky for Carole & Tuesday

Best Protagonist: Senku in Dr. STONE

Best Antagonist: Isabella in THE PROMISED NEVERLAND

Anime of the Year: DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA

Thanks for joining us for this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards! How did your favorites fare? Talk it out in the comments—and start taking notes for your favorites of 2020!

Shout! Factory Kicks Off TokuSHOUTsu Channel with Kamen Rider

It’s official, Rider fans! Pluto TV and Shout! Factory are teaming up for a new, ad-supported streaming channel (entitled “TokuSHOUTsu“) that will feature the U.S. debut of the original 1971 Kamen Rider live-action tokusatsu TV series as well as other Japanese special effects TV programming such as Ultraman Leo and Super Sentai.

The TokuSHOUTsu channel launches on Pluto TV at midnight Pacific (3am Eastern) on March 17, 2020. An official website, Twitter feed (@tokushoutsu), Facebook page, and Instagram feed have also been launched for the TokuSHOUTsu channel.

In additional to the linear programming offered by the channel, Kamen Rider and other series will also be available on-demand through the Shout! Factory TV website.

Source: Official Shout! Factory blog

Copyright info: © 2019 Shout! Factory. All rights reserved.

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SSSS.GRIDMAN, Show By Rock!! to Be Shown Off During Pony Canyon Live Stream This Weekend

Even though AnimeJapan isn’t happening this weekend due to being canceled in the wake of the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the world, some of the announcements and stage events are still going on – just in another form.

On March 14, Pony Canyon announced its live stream line-up for the upcoming weekend in lieu of the canceled event, including having news from SSSS.GRIDMAN, Show By Rock!!, A3!, and more. The stream will be shown live from 10 AM Japan Time on the Pony Canyon YouTube page on March 21. The scheduled event can be seen below.

Below is the full schedule (in Japan Time) for the Saturday live-stream hosted by voice actor Shunichi Toki with the anime stage as well as who will be appearing on the stream. Sunday hasn’t been announced as of yet.

11:00 AM – Masayoshi Oishi

11:45 AM – SSSS.GRIDMAN featuring Yuya Hirose and Ryosuke Takahashi

12:30 PM – Show by Rock!! Mashumairesh!! featuring Hikaru Tono, Yuuko Natsuyoshi, Misaki Watada, and Aya Yamane

2:30 PM – A3! featuring Kodai Sakai, Yusuke Shirai, Shunichi Toki, and Ren Ozawa

3:20 PM – ReFlap featuring Yuri Matsuoka, Daiki Hamano, Takahide Ishii, and Kentaro Kumagai

4:10 PM – Akari Kito

5:00 PM – Revue Starlight featuring Momoyo Koyama, Haruki Iwata, Hinata Sato, and Ayasa Ito

What anime from the Pony Canyon event are you looking forward to learning more about? Let us know down below!

Source: Pony Canyon on YouTube via Otakomu

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Who Defines Justice in My Hero Academia?

Hello all, and welcome back to Why It Works. Today I’ve been thinking about My Hero Academia again, and particularly about what the recently introduced Gentle Criminal has to say about justice in the world of Academia. Academia‘s prior villains have aligned themselves with goals that it’s fairly easy to describe as uncontroversially villainous—murdering, kidnapping, and the wholesale destruction of society tend to be considered traditional “bad guy stuff,” and it’s generally easy to tell who’s in the right when one side is trying to kill everyone, and the other side is anti-killing everyone.

In contrast, Gentle’s “crimes” are almost more like performance art, civil disobedience intended to draw attention to genuine injustices in society. He raises questions that traditional heroes, largely concerned with defeating self-styled “villains” and maintaining the peace, don’t actually seem well-equipped to grapple with. Are heroes only capable of fighting problems that drape themselves in a mask and cape? And if heroes must fight for justice, what if that justice exists within the very system they’re working to protect?

Heroism occupies a somewhat strange role in My Hero Academia’s society, as least legally speaking. They’re not technically a branch of My Hero Academia‘s police; they exist independently, set their own hours and duties, and are given a great deal of leeway in terms of how they pursue justice. In spite of that, their powers to actually affect society seem relatively limited; they are concerned largely with petty crimes and career criminals, and for large-scale operations like the Overhaul raid, they work directly with official police officers. If superheroes are supposed to represent justice or righteousness, and superheroes work directly with the police, then the natural implication is that law and righteousness are always the same thing.

But in truth, law and righteousness are not the same. If All For One suddenly became the prime minister of Japan, that wouldn’t make his pursuit of a dystopian empire righteous, just because he’s pursuing it in a legal manner. And as we’ve already seen with Endeavor, just because someone is pursuing legally approved actions, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re “embodying heroism.” Often, heroism means accepting you will be hated for doing what is right. Throughout comic history, superheroes have often come into conflict with official law enforcement, because the priorities and moral code of any single do-gooder are naturally going to stand some distance apart from justice as defined by a given country’s laws.

Characters like Twice and Toga seem like natural repercussions of a world like My Hero Academia‘s, where there is no distinction between superheroes and law enforcement officers. Neither of them are necessarily “evil,” but when your two choices are hero and villain, and being a hero demands being an avatar of the law, a lot of people will end up slotted into villainy by default. And of course, once you’ve joined the only group that accepts you, it’s a small step from there to embracing the values that actively distance them from the law, echoing the real-world consequences of the carceral state. Ultimately, the binary breakdown of heroes and villains is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you’re barred from being a hero but still want to change the world, you’ll eventually prove yourself a “villain” by this system’s rules.

Heroism in My Hero Academia is supposed to be aspirational—“anyone can become a hero,” and all that. Through characters like Midoriya and Bakugo, My Hero Academia has demonstrated that innate talent or temperament aren’t inherent prerequisites for heroism; but it seems like “doing what you’re told” just might be. And when the fundamental definition of heroism is dictated by the government and the police, deciding what is truly righteous can be a hard choice. Gentle, through his civil disobedience and largely victimless crimes, demonstrates the clear limitations of this system by highlighting the “villains” that cannot be thwarted while working as an extension of the law.

Gentle’s position actually seems fairly reasonable to me, as there are perhaps even more legal injustices than the illegal kind. What if the government is corrupt? What if perfectly legal market forces are resulting in mass suffering? What about the fate of the environment? These are questions superhero stories have struggled with across time, from the direct heroes-as-cops commentary of Watchmen, to the rich moral ambiguity of Concrete Revolutio. And particularly in the world of My Hero Academia, where success as a hero is in part defined by your ability to gather fans, heroes are incentivized to focus on crowd-pleasing action spectacle—not the kind of audience-unfriendly but essential work Gentle is pursuing. Given all this, would it be more accurate to label Gentle the one genuine superhero, instead of a publicity-oriented supercop?

These are questions it might not be possible to truly, satisfyingly answer. Gentle’s behavior, while righteous in an individual sense, could never be scaled up without resulting in chaos. If every single hero is able to break any laws in order to right any perceived injustice, how could society function at all? Every day would be packed with violent discord stemming from incompatible ideals of justice—the precise situation that strict regulation and coordination with the police is likely intended to avoid.

But questions without answers are often the most interesting ones, and “what is the relationship between heroism and the law” is one of the best questions My Hero Academia‘s asked yet. I’ve greatly enjoyed Gentle and La Brava’s contributions to the series, and hope to see them again soon—but even more than that, I hope Kohei Horikoshi continues to challenge and complicate the morality of his fascinating world!

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28 Volumes of Haikyu!! Manga Released for Free in Japan to Combat Boredom in Coronavirus COVID-19 Crisis

To combat the boredom kids at home face while schools across Japan remain closed to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, a long list of manga series have been released online for free, including over a decade of One Piece. It was announced on March 16 that Haikyu!! will join that list, releasing 28 volumes of the popular volleyball manga series for free starting from today.

Haikyu! will be released on both the Zebrack Comic website and the Japanese Shonen Jump Plus application for free until April 6, the end of the Spring holidays in Japan and the scheduled start of the new school year. The 28 volumes cover the entire story up to the middle of the Tokyo Nationals Arc, which is currently being adapted into anime form in the latest season, HAIKYU‼ TO THE TOP.

According to the NHK, over 810 cases of COVID-19 coronavirus have been found in Japan as of reporting. The Japanese Ministry of Health reports, as of March 15, 12,239 tests have been performed for the virus in the country, not including those of the charted flights from Wuhan, but including those on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The event cancellation request from the Japanese government has been extended another 10 days.

Sources: Matan Web, NHK, Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare

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Castlevania: [SPOILER] Really is The Best Successor to Dracula’s Kingdom

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Castlevania Season 3, streaming now on Netflix.

Fans were no doubt curious about how Season 3 of Netflix’s Castlevania would deal with its Dracula arc after the vampire king was killed off last season. Trevor, Sypha and his son, Alucard, murdered the dark overlord, creating a power vacuum within the species, which came as a surprise as he’s the franchise’s main villain.

A coup was attempted on his empire by Carmilla of Styria and while she didn’t finish him off, many expected her to claim his title, especially as Alucard didn’t care for his kind. However, while she touts the power, it’s not the usurper who actually proves to be the best successor to everything Vlad the Impaler created and left behind, it’s actually his former Forgemaster, Isaac.

Isaac’s one of the most nuanced and relatable characters in the show, with much of his background, revealed last season, painting a humanized figure as he worked to create Night Creatures for Dracula. He’s a gay, black man, oppressed, used and abused all his life and eventually sold into slavery. To make matters worse, he was turned into a vampire by sinister humans, making his journey heartbreaking as hell. It’s why Dracula had an air of sympathy towards Isaac, teaching him everything to the point Isaac’s peer, Hector, was jealous, as well as Alucard.

Isaac seemed to be the Chosen One, that is until Dracula started to wonder if mass genocide was indeed the best solution for mankind. Dracula teleported Isaac away when his attackers came, but you could sense there was a fracture before then as Isaac lost confidence in his boss for shifting his priorities when it came to executing humans. Isaac felt they were a virus and it became clear, in time, he’d finish the job.

This season, however, there’s a lot more depth to him as the baton’s passed, and a lot more of the doctrines embedded in him show why he is the way he is. He’s considered extremist and with different people he meets this season, he speaks about his Islamic faith, the prophet Muhammad and what could be construed as his crusade of war. But when he encounters a Jamaican Captain to take him from Africa back to Europe so he can hunt Carmilla and her slave, Hector, things take a surprising turn.

The Captain educates him on his current vision — saying he’s down for purging the bad but if Isaac kills everyone, people like him, the good ones will die too. This isn’t real, tangible change and so, the Forgemaster now wants something more than vengeance — he wants to course correct the planet along the lines of Thanos. It’s more than just population reduction like what Hector wanted, though, it’s about rebuilding the new one by burning the old one and fine-tuning who gets to live.

It’s a bit better than what Dracula had planned, which was just turning humans into livestock, and with Isaac’s new outlook, he seems to want coexistence with man and monster; he wants to step out of the shadows and change the world for the better, for everyone. It’s also more logical than Drac’s mission, which was based on emotions and him losing his wife Lisa to humans. Isaac has now gone from that kind of vendetta to cleansing the planet for the “greater good.” Admittedly, he experiences hiccups at Genoa with humans once more opposing him out of sheer ignorance and he takes out a village to create a new army, but these are just temporary measures for the larger battle.

He needs an army and has to kill for it, the same way the Mad Titan did to assemble his Infinity Stones and the Gauntlet. The endgame, thereafter, is the true victory, and with a teleporting mirror, a legion with no infighting and a magical tower, Isaac now has more than a castle compared to the Impaler. He will be the defining point that ensures the best of his species (and everyone else’s) makes it to the future because that’s the only way to create a better tomorrow.

What makes the idea of Isaac being the new Dracula all the more enticing is that a fourth season could even see him squaring up against his former teacher, giving us a true battle for the vampire throne.

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Season 4 of Date A Live TV Anime Announced to Be in Production

Long-running romantic comedy/sci-fi TV anime Date A Live, adapted from the light novels by Koshi Tachibana, announced on March 16 that the series will be getting a 4th anime season, titled Date A Live IV. The franchise has spawned three TV anime series, which has been airing since March 2013, a film, and a soon-to-be-released spin-off TV anime based on the spin-off Date A Live Fragment: Date A Bullet light novels.

A key visual (seen above) was released alongside the announcement and comments from light novel author Koshi Tachibana and illustrator Tsunako. Both Tachibana and Tsunako thanked fans for their continuing support of the franchise and asked fans to please enjoy the next anime adaptation. So far 22 volumes of the light novel series have been released in Japan.

It has not been announced if the staff and cast from the previous seasons or anime film will be returning.

Three seasons of the Date A Live TV anime have been broadcast so far, with all the seasons currently streaming on Crunchyroll. They describe the series as such:

Ordinary high school boy Shido discovers a mysterious girl at ground zero of a recent spacequake. Shido learns, through his sister Kotori, that the girl is one of the Spirits: mystical creatures responsible for the spacequakes. Shido is recruited to help “seal” the sprits and end their threat to mankind. There’s just one catch: the only way to seal a spirit—is to make her fall in love with you.

Source: Comic Natalie

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Castlevania: 5 Things We Want to See in Season 4

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Castlevania Season 3, streaming now on Netflix.

As Castlevania deals with the aftermath of Dracula’s death, the third season of the Netflix series transforms into more of a slow burn. There’s a vampire civil war brewing, with Carmilla trying to turn Styria into an empire that can march across Europe, while Isaac, Dracula’s ex-Forgemaster, prepares for conflict with her and his former colleague, Hector, whom he felt betrayed their dark lord.

However, it’s not until the final two episodes that the action swells, as a cult tries to bring back Dracula, while Carmilla and Isaac begin to assemble more soldiers for the battle to come. As all of that happens, Trevor and Sypha explore the Infinite Corridor with the quaint Saint Germain, and Alucard, left in isolation all season, finally embraces the darkness his father once held within.

With that in mind, let’s look at what we’d like to see explored in Season 4 as all of these threads begin to intertwine.

ALUCARD’S FAMILY REUNION

We didn’t really see much of Alucard (aka Adrian Tepes) with his mother, Lisa. He was shown more with Dracula only after she was killed, often bantering about whether wiping out humanity would stain her legacy as a benevolent woman of science. He loved her dearly, and she was his light, which made him unite with Trevor and Sypha to take down the Impaler.

Now that the corridor has proved a means for Dracula and Lisa to return to the land of the living, we’d love to see Alucard meeting both of them. His father owes him an apology and could turn a heroic page by bringing him back from the dark side. Lisa also reminding him about destiny would help to bring their story full-circle and provide a happy ending to their sordid family affair.

THE BELMONT ARMORY

We’ve just gotten glimpses of the arsenal Trevor’s family has assembled over the centuries as monster hunters. This season we see Alucard showing Sumi and Taka more of the guns, knives and swords these whip-masters used to kill vampires, werewolves and other hellish creatures, so we’d love to see Trevor returning to his home — now part of Alcuard’s teleporting castle — to upgrade.

He’s only used his iconic whip thus far, and the treasure trove is heavily under-utilized. In the games, all of these weapons were integral to the storyline, especially with the bevy of demons Trevor would face, so let’s hope he expands his armory to keep the character fresh. This would also help him honor his ancestors after he became a degenerate drunk.

DRACULA’S REVENGE

Dracula needs to exact revenge on Carmilla for leading a coup against him. Sure, it’s his son’s allies that murdered him, but Carmilla was the one who instigated the vampires to turn against their leader. Ultimately, Dracula kept the vamps at bay, but Carmilla manipulated things so that, once he was off the table, she’d have free rein to conquer Europe.

They stabbed Vlad in the back, but we didn’t get as epic a showdown we wanted. Verbal sparring only goes so far, especially as we know Carmilla is a formidable opponent.

DRACULA’S TRUE SUCCESSOR

Isaac was Dracula’s favorite, because he despised mankind. As a gay, black man, Isaac was ostracized his entire life; he related to Dracula’s perspective on humanity as a virus. It’s why they got along so well, making Hector, and especially Alucard, jealous. Dracula even saved Isaac from the coup, but by then, the Forgemaster felt his master had lost sight of the plot.

Isaac reigniting this vision as the new Dracula would add nuance to the series and test Vlad if he does return. Isaac was turned into a vampire by humans and with his Forgemaster powers, he could be just as powerful as Vlad himself. He’s not a one-dimensional character, because he does want what’s best for Earth, and with his Night Creatures, his new tower and transportation mirror, and the mystical Miranda, he has the tools to surpass his mentor as a better tyrant.

JUSTICE FOR HECTOR

Hector turned away from Dracula’s mission, because he simply wanted population control instead of total annihilation of humans by Vlad and Isaac. That resulted in Carmilla using him in her takeover. Now, because of Lenore, he’s their slave, creating monsters loyal to the sisterhood in Styria.

We need to see him get revenge because of how Lenore used sex to trap him. She doesn’t even love him; he’s a mere pet to her. And after all the torture, it would be such poetic justice if he kills her. Lenore gave him hope that vampires could change and help humanity, but after he was played like a fiddle, fans are hoping Hector get an opportunity to make her pay. After all, without Lenore, Carmilla’s round table would come crashing down.

Castlevania Season 3 is streaming on Netflix. It stars Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont, Alejandra Reynoso as Sypha Belnades, James Callis as Alucard and Graham McTavish as Dracula.

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Main Cast and Staff Get Lovey-Dovey for Komatta Jii-san TV Anime

Who says that love is for the young? The main cast and staff have been revealed for Komatta Jii-san (“Unmanageable Grandpa”), an upcoming TV anime based on the romantic comedy manga by Shinichiro Ooe about an elderly couple that are still very much in love after being together for more than 50 years. The main staff for the series includes:

• Original work: Komatta Jii-san by Shinichiro Ooe (serialized on LINE Manga)
• Director: Hiroshi Namiki
• Sound director: Yuu Satou
• Music: Hiroto Sasaki
• Theme song: “Jii-san no Love-Love♡Scat” (performed in-character by Satoshi Hino)
• Animation production: Kachidoki Studio

Komatta Jii-san features the voice talents of Satoshi Hino as Grandpa, Inori Minase as Grandma, and Toshiyuki Morikawa as the Narrator.

The story of Komatta Jii-san follows Grandpa and Grandma, an elderly couple that have been married for more than 50 years. Although Grandma worries that Grandpa may be going senile in his old age, Grandpa still constantly surprises and thrills her with his romantic overtures.

Komatta Jii-san will broadcast in Japan on BS NTV on Wednesdays during the 23:59 time slot beginning on April 08, 2020.

Sources:

Ota-suke

Comic Natalie

Copyright info: © Shinichiro Ooe / LINE・Komatta Jii-san Production Committee

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Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 – Netflix Shares New Stills from Its CG Anime

Netflix has released a new series of stills for its upcoming contribution to the Ghost in the Shell franchise — the CG anime series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.

The images, shared to Netflix’s official NX Twitter account, highlight the show’s characters, though primarily main protagonist Motoko Kusanagi and her second-in-command, Batou. Netflix’s caption reads, “Hey cyberpunks, quit hacking gibsons and check these new screens of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.”

Based on the popular manga created by Masamune Shirow and set to arrive next month, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 takes place after AI developments following an economic disaster called the Synchronized Global Default in the year 2045 plunged the world into “Sustainable War.” The series fallouts Motoko and Batou, whose mercenary work takes a sharp turn with the arrival of “post humans.”

Per the show’s full synopsis,

When sustainable war spawns a “post-human” threat, Major Kusanagi and her Section 9 team are called back into action.

In the year 2045, after an economic disaster known as the Synchronized Global Default, rapid developments in AI propelled the world to enter a state of “Sustainable War”. However, the public is not aware of the threat that AI has towards the human race.

Full-body cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi and her second-in-command Batou are former members of Public Security Section 9, who are now hired mercenaries traveling hot devastated American west coast. This land is full of opportunity for the major and her team, they utilize their enhanced cyberbrains and combat skills from their time working in Section 9. However, things get complicated with the emergence of “post humans,” who have extreme intelligence and physical powers. The members of Section 9 comeback together again in order to face this new threat.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 is directed by Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki. The series arrives on Netflix in April.

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Manga Inspires PS4 and Smartphone Video Games

The latest issue of Weekly Shonen Jump announced that hit-manga series and Anime of the Year winner, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba would inspire two new games, a “battle-royal” smartphone game, set to be released this year, and a “demon-slaying action” PlayStation 4 game.

The first of the games announced, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Keppu Kengeki Royale, will be available this year on iOS and Android smartphones, though there was no mention of which phones will be supported. The game pits characters from the series against each other in a “battle royale” scenario, with two teams of demons and demon slayers fighting it out in various settings from the manga and TV anime series.

The first key visual was released on March 16 (top image), and it was announced that Quatro A (Touhou Project Cannonball) will be developing the game with Soleil Game Studios (Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time) helping with development and planning.

Alongside that, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Hinokami Kepputan was announced in the same issue. Not much is known about the game other than the player will be put into the role of Tanjiro helping cure Nezuko of her illness in a “demon-slaying action” scenario based on the story from the manga series. The game is set to be released in 2021. No game studio or company has been attached to the game.

Both games will be published by Aniplex (who are a subsidiary of Sony), with Ufotable and Shueisha as producers on the games. The TV anime series adaptation of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba aired last year, which was streamed on Crunchyroll as it aired, with an anime film in the works based on the Mugen Train arc from the manga by Koyoharu Gotouge.

Sources: Matan Web, PRTimes, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Game Website

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