#anime-restoration

#anime-restoration

Hoppers is a surprisingly blunt pushback to the notion of animals living together in harmony. Its advertising promises goofy hijinks amid an enclave of diverse species whose ecosystem is threatened by humans.

Set on the blossom tree-lined fringes of Hyde Park in London, Herbert Wilcox's black-and-white rom-com blows in like a fresh spring breeze. The film charts the will-they-won't-they romance between Richard (Michael Wilding), a wealthy lord masquerading as a butler, and Judy (Anna Neagle), the niece of the family who employs him.

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter tells of an elderly bamboo cutter who discovers a tiny, radiant girl inside a glowing stalk of bamboo. He and his wife raise her as their own daughter, naming her Kaguya-hime. As she grows, she becomes extraordinarily beautiful, attracting suitors from across the land. Five noblemen seek her hand in marriage, but she tests them by assigning each an impossible task-such as retrieving the Buddha's stone begging bowl or the jewelled branch of Mount Hōrai. Each suitor fails.

You've got your obvious bangers, such as Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and Jujutsu Kaisen, but there are at least twenty weekly releases currently airing that are worth watching. Hell's Paradise, Fate/Strange Fake, Sentenced to Be a Hero, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Trigun Stargaze, Golden Kamuy - I could go on, and that's without including the stuff that just finished airing, such as Spy x Family and To Your Eternity.

MG Raiser from MangaGuardian is a tiny shelf adapter that takes that double-row habit and makes it less painful. It is a compact L-shaped stand that lets you display two rows of manga in the same footprint, with the back row raised just enough to stay visible. Simple plastic geometry aimed squarely at overcrowded shelves, it solves a niche problem that anyone with more than 20 volumes has quietly dealt with at some point.

The Bud­dhis­ti­cal­ly inflect­ed " ichi-go ichi‑e" is just one in the vast library of yoji­juku­go, high­ly con­densed apho­ris­tic expres­sions writ­ten with just four char­ac­ters. (Oth­er coun­tries with Chi­nese-influ­enced lan­guages have their ver­sions, includ­ing sajaseon­geo in Korea and chéngyǔ in Chi­na itself.) It descends, as the sto­ry goes, from a slight­ly longer say­ing favored by the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry tea mas­ter Sen no Rikyū, " ichi-go ni ichi-do " (一期に一度).

"I wanted it to feel how people have been living through, walking through (the city)," she said. "It's a massive city, Tokyo is, so just kind of find the right place for people around the world and have that experience."

Anime fans won't be getting any respite from the streaming service price hikes that now feel inevitable on every platform every couple of years. Crunchyroll announced today that it will be increasing the monthly costs for all its plans by $2. That means the Fan tier will now run you $10 a month, the Mega Fan Tier is $14 a month and the Ultimate Fan Tier is $18 a month.

One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy joined the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats, the latest Demon Slayer film earned $780 million at the worldwide box office in 2025, and the animated musical KPop Demon Hunters (though not technically anime) became the most-watched original Netflix movie of all time. As someone who had no one to talk to growing up during the days of Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, it's tough to even process that the genre has reached mainstream status around the globe.

In all the dystopian visions of the future that the movies have trotted out over the last few decades, the one that sticks the most, surprisingly, is WALL-E. That's not just because of the chastening sight of an over-polluted Earth or those sedentary humans glued to their screens. It's because those quite plausible possibilities mean something different in a kids movie. It's their future, after all.