The Year Ahead In Animation

Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer who covers games, manga, and animation, with bylines at io9, Kotaku, IGN, and more. For tips and professional inquiries, email him at [email protected].

By all accounts, last year was remarkable for animation across the board. Somehow, 2025 is already poised to be an even more significant year for animation concerning the quantity and quality of shows and films slated for release. As the old saying goes, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Therefore, looking forward to the highly anticipated animated shows we are all surviving until 2025 to watch, let us examine previous years’ industry trends and persistent problems and how they might influence next year’s array of animated projects.

The Top Story:

As with most years recently, the trend for 2024 was for acquisitions and mergers to continue being in vogue while workers fought for fair rights. The former will tentatively see a positive outcome for the industry and animation community, with Toho acquiring Gkids following the box office success of Godzilla: Minus One and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. In contrast to Sony’s pending acquisition of Kadokawa continuing the monopolization of the anime industry to go band for band with Microsoft’s layoff-heavy acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it’s hard not to see the benefit of these two juggernauts, which previously collaborated on the global release of feature animated films like Promare and Weathering With You, continuing to bring more accessibility to anime as a serious contender in the box office. Hopefully, the deal’s initial vibe check won’t have any disappointing caveats down the line.

Looking further into industry-facing top stories is the animation industry’s continued fight for fair treatment. While the Animation Guild struck a three-year deal ensuring increases in health and pension funds, wages, and protections against the ever-pervasive rise in AI, fan-favorite Japanese studios like Mappa are still struggling to produce big marquee shows (Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen) without crunching their animators. The rollout of JJK‘s Shibuya Incident Arc saw animators take to X/Twitter to air the stringent conditions they endured to get the show out to viewers. This is all coming ahead as the anime community becomes more conscious of the treatment of animators. At the same time, studios such as the former Attack on Titan studio, Wit, are collaborating with fellow studios to prevent crunch. With so many shows set to release in 2025 (many of which are under one studio *cough cough Mappa*), it’ll be interesting to see how the anime industry produces shows without exhausting its talent.

What We’re Waiting For

As mentioned earlier, 2025 is stacked with shows and movies that are well worth the wait to watch. Here are some shows and films we think are the most worth adding to folks’ accumulating backlog of shows they still have to get to from last year.

The second season of The Apothecary Dairies on Crunchyroll is bound to continue to wow viewers with its drug-addled period drama. Next year will also see the long-awaited return of Fire Force, season two of Kaiju No. 8, Studio Trigger’s New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt, Solo Leveling‘s second season on Crunchyroll, and Spy x Family‘s third season. 

Netflix also looks to be continuing its foothold in the animation zeitgeist with the second season of Castlevania: Nocturne, Devil May Cry (whenever the Capcom animated series is ready to wahoo pizza its devil-hunting show onto the streamer), The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep starring Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle, and The Summer Hikaru Died (which we hear is really messed up in a good way).

Mappa is also looking to put its name back at the forefront of the anime community with its upcoming Chainsaw Man Reze Arc film; Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe’s upcoming anime (with John Wick director Chad Stahelski) Lazarus; and Zenshu, its anime about the anime-making process.

Science Saru will also compete with Mappa next year with its lineup of shows and films, including The Colors Within, Dan Da Dan‘s second season, and its anime adaptation of Beastars creator Paru Itagaki’s Sanda manga.

Warner Bros., Disney, and Prime Video are also coming to play in 2025 with films and shows like The Day the Earth Blew Up, Elio, Zootopia 2, Star Wars Visions season three, and the third season of Invincible (with a promise of shorter gaps between upcoming seasons). DC and Marvel’s presence in the animation sphere will include Aztec Batman Clash of Empires, Harley Quinn season five, Marvel Zombies, andYour Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

We will also see a rise in some new shows redefining the industry, as stalwart shonen series like Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia wind to a close. Chief among them are Sakamoto Days, Gachiakuta, Kowloon Generic Romance (which is receiving an anime and live-action movie on Prime Video), Witch Hat Atelier, Witch Watch, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux, To Be Hero X (with its mix of CG and 2D animation), My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Takopi’s Original Sin, and whatever Mamoru Hoshoda and studio Chizu’s upcoming space-time crossing film, Scarlet, will have in store for us.

Unconventional Wisdom

Like last year, the animation industry’s ongoing unionization efforts, production delays, and layoffs will make 2025 another year where fans must unite to resist executives promoting AI as the ultimate solution to all the industry’s problems. Whether it be through resisting the urge to burn down a rainforest by making AI edits of anime characters and funny voice edits of said characters in viral clips (that voice actors have already made clear they’re against), or shaming folks touting AI as the democratization of a hard-earned skill, fans will need to make their feelings known about the human element of animation being what makes works unique. If folks can manage that much while shaming C-suite execs for cutting corners and stifling the production of animation studios who flutter their eyelashes at AI when studios fail to meet their unachievable goals of maximum profits, that would be great, too.

Companies to Watch

The animation companies to watch in 2025 are Mappa and Science Saru. As we noted (numerous times) above, Mappa is set to put itself back on the map as the anime studio of 2025, if not by the quality of its output but by the sheer number of projects it’ll release in the calendar year. By that same merit, Science Saru, which is far from the new kid on the block, will see a continued rise in prominence with its murderers’ row of killer anime titles. While Mappa has five anime confirmed for 2025 in the Rose of Versailles film, Lazarus, Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill season two, Chainsaw Man Reze Arc, and Zenshu—Science Saru only has three with The Colors Within, Dan Da Dan season two, and Sanda. Mappa and Science Saru also have their 2026 lined up with the imminent release of Hell’s Paradise season two and the Ghost in the Shell remake.

It will be intriguing to observe whether reports in the upcoming year will perpetuate Mappa’s reputation for overworking its employees or if the studio has developed a sustainable solution to its previous issues. Similarly, it will be interesting to see if Science Saru, an anime studio praised like Mappa for revolutionizing the industry, will fall into the same pitfalls as Mappa or set a new standard by producing all of its shows without exploiting its workers to meet deadlines.

Big story on Crunchyroll’s recent stumbles in the anime business from Bloomberg’s @cecianasta and @6d6f636869.

Just yesterday Parrot Analytics shared data on anime contributions to the streamers’ revenue. Netflix is ahead of Crunchyroll, and Hulu and Prime Video are catching up. https://t.co/RxUJfvXt2g pic.twitter.com/GLmPkkBERS

— Richardson Handjaja (@rhandjaja) December 20, 2024

Streaming companies to watch are Crunchyroll and Netflix. While it’s long been believed that Crunchyroll remains the king of the streamer mountain through its anime catalog, a recent report from Bloomberg confirmed that this is no longer the case, with Netflix blowing Crunchyroll out of the water. Even without empirical data to back up the report, a vibe check of seasonal output from the streamers over the past three years has shown that Crunchyroll’s lineup of shows is oversaturated with so many titles that, in appealing to anyone, don’t have as much staying power as the smarter exclusive choices streamers like Netflix and Hulu have made. Key among them are memorable shows like Arcane, Castlevania, Devilman Crybaby, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Heavenly Delusion, and Summer Time Rendering.

The trend of significant anime like Dan Da Dan, Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead, and Chainsaw Man being exclusives is quickly becoming a thing of the past thanks to shared releases on each streamer, leaving it up to streamers to promote each title as the premiere destination to watch them. Crunchyroll was reportedly against doing that for Dan Da Dan, arguably 2024’s breakout anime. Time will tell if Crunchyroll’s paywalling of the later arcs of One Piece, which its competition is slowly backfilling, will pay off or lead fans to go to the seven seas themselves to watch the long-running anime.

A Longshot Bet

While these industry-facing concerns are already daunting to consider going into 2025, it would be beneficial if the future of anime could reflect these conditions by exploring storytelling in ways that are not solely based on a high school student fulfilling their power fantasy with an ensemble of super-powered friends. Non-shonen (boys) anime stepping back to allow shojo (girls) anime, seinen (young men) anime, and josei (young women) anime to share equal prominence in the mainstream would expand viewers’ appreciation for storytelling that does not rely on power scaling and tournament arcs. It’d also make room for more nuanced and mature stories of interpersonal relationships and navigating the world that anime fans would do well with exploring alongside their wish-fulfillment fantasies.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.