Popverse's top stories

• Don't expect Resident Evil's main character to be a Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, or Jill Valentine. According to Weapons' Zach Cregger, he is just "an idiot"
• A decade before the X-Men movies even began, Jim Lee confirms he was making Charles Xavier Patrick Stewart
• MarriageToxin creator is "hella grateful" that anime Season 2 has been announced for 2027

Every creative person has that one piece of art that they believe will be their legacy, the thing that all their future endeavors are judged against. That can develop into a fear that their best work has already been made and their best days are behind them. Attack on Titan creator Hajime Isayama has embraced that fear and accepted that, no matter what he does in the future, he is unlikely to make something as influential and successful as Attack on Titan again.

During a conference to celebrate the rescreening of Attack on Titan: The Last Attack in early 2026, Hajime Isayama commented that he wasn’t really working much anymore. “It’s been years since the manga serialization and anime broadcast [of Attack on Titan] ended, but I’m not working now. Occasionally, I draw illustrations and sign autographs, and I’ve also helped with Yuki Kaji’s Soyogi project, but I no longer draw on a daily basis.”

The idea of following up Attack on Titan remains a daunting one for Isayama, who added, “If I tried to write something, it would just feel like a cutout of something I already depicted in Attack on Titan. I think that first serialization was one where I just poured out all of myself until I was completely drained.”

Having a work that is as successful as Attack on Titan is surely a blessing and a curse, which is something that Hajime Isayama is grappling with at the moment. We’re sure he’ll pick up the pen and work on a new manga eventually, but for now, he’s waiting for an idea that will be even bigger than Attack on Titan.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic