On June 8, 2021, the Vtubers community was hit with a big announcement by the famous Hololive Vtuber Kiryu Coco herself which came out of nowhere. Coco announced on a live stream that was just shy of 12 minutes and titled "Super important announcement from Coco."
Anime Expo Lite 2021 will feature its special live online concert featuring performances by many talented artists. This year's two-day livestream will run from Saturday, July3rd through Sunday, July 4th.
Anime Expo Lite has launched a promotion for registered ticket holders to visit the Little Tokyo district in Los Angeles, to take advantage of a special promotion being offered by many of the surrounding retailers and restaurants.
Netflix has just announced they will be streaming globally Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie Part 1 & Part 2 will be premiering globally on Netflix (outside of Japan) on June 3, 2021.
The movies were originally released in Japanese theaters on January 8 and February 11 respectively earlier this year and served as a continuation of the Sailor Moon Crystal series.
During the second-anniversary online celebration of Demon Slayer (Demon Slayer Matsuri Online -Anime 2nd Anniversary Festival) animation studio Ufotable revealed a trailer was released for the second season covering the Entertainment Arc from the manga titled Kimetsu no Yaiba: Yuukaku-hen. The arc will focus on the main protagonist Tanjiro and his teammates Inosuke and Zenitsu helping the Sound Hashira, Tengen, on a mission to the red light district in Yoshiwara.
The second season is a direct continuation of the 2020 Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie (Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train) which became the highest-grossing film of all time at box offices in Japan.
No exact dates have been mentioned but it appears to be tentatively set for later this year.
For anime fans who love collecting and want to try something new, a Japanese tech company YUIMEX introduced AniPic!, a platform that distributes collectible digital art from popular anime series (starting with Great Pretender) using blockchain technology.
Three manga panels drawn and 23 years ago Eiichiro Oda's title "One Piece" was brought, upon the Japanese continent, a new series, conceived in his mind, and dedicated to that proposition that all pirates......wow look at that sounds like the Gettysburg address.
Online streaming giant Netflix announced a new Godzilla anime series titled Godzilla Singular Point. The series will be directed by Atsushi Takahashi and will be a joint production between studio bones and studio Orange. Kazue Kato, best known as the mangaka of Blue Exorcist, will serve as character designer. The series is set to release sometime in 2021.
As we posted earlier, BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! joined together with Los Angeles' Cafe Dulce for a collaboration cafe event. Cafe events are standard in Japan and if you go to Akihabara you'll probably run into more than a few just walking around. If you can think of a franchise, it probably had a cafe. Because of COVID19 we unfortunately did not get the full cafe treatment with art displays, ambience, and a lot more goods to buy. To make up for it we did get something a little more unique - a Zoom call with none other than Poppin'Party's own Aimi (voice of Kasumi Toyama) and Ayasa Ito (voice of Arisa Ichigaya).
One of the cool things about Japan is that they have lots of random pop-up shops and cafe collaborations. If you can think of a popular show or franchise, it's probably had a cafe. You'll find themed food, drinks, and desserts and all in all it's a lot of fun. The cafe itself will be decorated according to the franchise and there's usually videos, art, and items on display. You can also buy special goods that are generally not seen overseas minus resellers or your lucky friends who have gone to Japan and back.
Bushiroad has decided to pair with Little Tokyo's Cafe Dulce to bring a BanG Dream collaboration to America and it's possible that this year's Anime Expo would have had an in-person version. Collaboration cafes are not things that come to America very often so this is a very special treat.
Game developer CD PROJEKT RED revealed today a new 10 episode anime series, CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS during their Night City Wire live stream. The series will be set in the same universe as the upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077, and animated by Studio Trigger. Hiroyuki Imaishi will be serving as Director, Masahiko Otsuka as Assistant Director, Hiromi Wakabayashi as Creative Director, and Yoh Yoshinari and Yuto Kaneko as Character Designers. Otsuka will also be adapting the screenplay with Yoshiki Usa. The musical score will be handled by Akira Yamaoka who's best known for his work on the Silent Hill series.
The series is set to premiere in 2022 on Netflix.
Check out the announcement trailer and press release below.
Sega has released the second official trailer for Shin Sakura Wars the Animation, it's upcoming animated series based on the PlayStation 4 game Sakura Wars.
Anime streaming website Crunchyroll revealed that they will be premiering an anime adaptation of the popular Korean webtoon comic, Tower of God on April 1. The webtoon was originally published in 2010 by SIU and published by Naver on its WEBTOON platform. Since February 2020, the series has been translated into 28 languages with over 4.5 billion views worldwide.
Check out the trailer and more information below.Check out the newest trailer released today by Netflix as we get a better look at the unique character designs provided by Russian illustrator Ilya Kusvashinov.