Funimation

Image: Studio MAPPA/CrunchyrollAnimation studio MAPPA has kept itself pretty busy ever since it opened in 2011, and 2022 was an especially big year for it. Along with working on the second part of the final season of Attack on Titan, the company also released Chainsaw Man, Dance Dance Danseur, and brought Jujutsu Kaisen 0 stateside. 2023 looks to be an even more packed year for the studio, and it recently released new trailers for two of its upcoming projects.The first trailer is for MAPPA’s new series Hell’s Paradise:…

Screenshot: NHK NewsA metal sphere, which many are calling Godzilla’s egg, washed up on the shore of Enshu beach in Hamamatsu, Japan. Authorities responded to the scene where a woman reported that she had stumbled upon the sphere while out for her morning walk.A man told NHK News that he didn’t understand why it was getting so much attention, saying he had spotted the metal sphere (measuring 1.5 meters/4.9 feet in diameter) more than a month earlier. “It’s been there for a month,” he told the outlet, adding, “I tried to…

Image: Shonen Jump/Toei AnimationThe heroes of the manga anthology Shonen Jump—Luffy from One Piece, Deku from My Hero Academia, Goku from Dragon Ball Z, Naruto from Naruto, Ichigo from Bleach, etc., etc.—aren’t exactly strangers to each other, having appeared in countless video games and promotions together. But strangely, the manga anthology’s two biggest stars (that would be Luffy and Goku) have only met in animated form once, back in 2013, in a special that never made it to America. Well, not until next month, at…

Image: NetflixWe’ve finally gotten our official look at Netflix’s much-anticipated, maybe slightly dreaded live-action of adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s beyond-best-selling manga One Piece, and, well, it’s a lot of people’s backs. But man, those backs look incredibly accurate to the manga and anime.Image: NetflixNetflix’s released the series’ first official poster today, showing a rear of actor Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, who dreams of becoming the king of the pirates. As an extreme One Piece fan, I can say I’m…

Photo: Nicola Dove/NetflixShinichiro Watanabe is responsible for making the coolest anime of all time—so cool, in fact, it’s been regularly airing on Adult Swim for the last two decades, and is still being watched. It’s a testament to how great Cowboy Bebop is that it still enraptures audiences all these years later—something Netflix’s live-action adaptation decidedly did not achieve. And Watanabe was definitely not enraptured by it either.In an excellent interview spanning the director’s lengthy career, Forbes asked…

Image: ©2023 Yasuhiro Nightow, SHONENGAHOSHA / TRIGUN STAMPEDE ProjectFor over 20 years, Johnny Yong Bosch has been one of the most prolific voice actors around. But the role that kicked off his career was Vash the Stampede, the lead role in Trigun, the beloved anime series based on Yasuhiro Nightow’s manga, about a gun-toting pacifist on a Wild West-esque planet where everyone’s gunning for the enormous bounty on his head. A new adaptation, called Trigun Stampede, has just premiered, and it turns out Bosch will be coming…

Screenshot: TMSIt’s the big day, folks: a very special birthday to one of the most important religious figures on the planet, the child of the Virgin Mary. We’re talking about the vampire Camilla, of course. Who else could it have been?The wonderful story of Jesus’ twin—who once again I cannot stress enough is a vampire—comes in a bonkers episode of the iconic 1978 episode of Lupin III, called “Lupin Has Become a Vampire” in Japan, but incredibly localized as “But Your Brother Was Such a Nice Guy” in English. Killer…

Image: Toei AnimationOne Piece’s theatrical movies have generally been fine. Well, they used to be terrible until creator Eiichiro Oda started getting more hands-on with them, but generally they all ended in the same way—Monkey D. Luffy and his crewmates, and maybe a few more popular characters, teaming up to fight some new, ultra-powerful, non-canonical foe. But Red is different in almost every way, and for the better. It fills out Luffy’s backstory by introducing Uta, the daughter of One Piece’s most enigmatic…

Image: Bandai NamcoThroughout the last 30 years, Akira Toriyama has becomebest known as the man behind Dragon Ball Z and artist of acclaimed JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, and Blue Dragon. As a manga creator, his career goes all the way back to the mid 70s, though not all of his pre and post-Dragon Ball work (most of them one-shots) have transitioned over to anime. The last of his non-Dragon Ball works to be adapted for anime was Doctor Slump in the late 90s, but now another one of his works is coming over to…

Screenshot: HuluIn America, your 18th birthday is marked (usually) by receiving the right to vote. In Hulu’s upcoming TV series Extraordinary, people receive a miscellaneous superpower—with the exception of Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who’s managed to make it to 25 without discovering what ability she received, if any. But this Britcom turns Jen’s woes into a rather poignant—although very funny!—tale of a woman searching for her identity.See for yourself!Extraordinary | Official Trailer | HuluIf this feels reminiscent of the…