Enjoy this complimentary article, previously available exclusively for Popverse members. If you like what you see, consider becoming a Popverse member.

Fun fact about me: I love anime. And, since you’re reading this article, I’m going to guess that you do too. As a fan, I’m amazed at how far the anime industry and fandom have come in the past several years, exploding onto the mainstream in a way that I never thought possible when I was running around buying Totally Legit VHS copies of Dragon Ball as a kid. As a journalist, though, I have to think a little further ahead and think about the future of anime. Gotta have my finger on the pulse of the community, as it were.

But that is a job that is too big for me, so I sat down to talk to someone who has been covering anime longer and, honestly, better than I have, Samantha Ferreira. As editor-in-chief of Anime Herald, Samantha has been one of the most consistent figures in anime journalism for over a decade. Now, with Anime Herald’s first print edition just around the corner, we discussed why print media was important in the digital age, what shows might become the Next Big Thing in anime, and if we thought Crunchyroll and Netflix would ever learn to play nice with each other.

Making a physical magazine in a digital age

Both Ferreira and I exist in a digital industry. Almost all of the anime news people consume is online, either through websites or social media. The few print magazines dedicated to pop culture have seen declining sales for years now, so the first thing I wanted to find out was why, now, in 2025, is the right time to invest in a print edition of Anime Herald.

“It’s a lot of gut feeling,” she admitted. “A lot of kind of reading the market and hoping that what you did plays out right because, as you mentioned, print sales have been declining steadily. But I really think that, especially as we’re starting to see this embrace of physical media again, you’re starting to see the online future degrading rapidly. You’re starting to see publications bought up and shuttered. We’re starting to see companies just laying off staff and just dropping entire libraries of content. We’re starting to see streaming services yank titles that have been streamed for years and years and years with no way to really watch them otherwise.”

“So we’re starting to see people start to embrace the physical game. We’re starting to see people embrace vinyl records and Blu-ray disc sales. If you’re looking at the video game market, people have been making a big stink about Nintendo’s game key cards because they want to own the game. So I really think there’s something there. People want something tangible, especially as this world is becoming more and more digital and… the experience is being more and more controlled and degraded by larger corporations that are trying to jockey to control the market more than anything.”

This is an experience that anime fans have seen over the years, as sites like Funimation getting taken down and taking everyone’s digital purchases with it when they merged with Crunchyroll. “If you really want to have it for years and years and years to come,” Ferreria stressed to me. You need that on a disk. You need that on paper. You need that in a format that’s a hard copy.”

2026 anime we can't wait to see - and shows we dream of seeing

That is a lot of how the past is influencing present behavior in anime, but what about the future? What are the shows that we’re most looking forward to in 2026 and beyond? That’s where we had some slight disagreement, simply because that is so hard to decide. There were some obvious ones – we both agree that Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End season two will be huge – but then we had to do a bit more speculation.

“I would say to also look forward to Ghost in the Shell from Science Saru,” Ferreira told me. “Just because they’re doing something very different. They’re going back to the original manga and going for that aesthetic, and it is the most exciting thing I’ve seen with that property since Innocence.”

Science Saru, of course, is the studio behind the excellent Dan Da Dan adaptation that is currently airing on Netflix and Crunchyroll. We both agree that they are a studio “at the peak of their powers right now” and “hitting every single cylinder,” so their take on Ghost in the Shell should be very fun.

Another show that is on Samantha Ferreira’s radar is Akane-banashi, an anime already announced for 2026 that is based on Yuki Suenaga and Takamasu Moue’s manga about a young woman who trains to become the best rakugoka (a traditional Japanese comedic storyteller) both out of ambition and spite. “If they do it right, they’re gonna have a genuine magical experience bringing rakugo to life.”

Another project that Ferreira advised me to keep an eye on was Patlabor EZY, a series directed by Yutaka Izabuchi that reunites several key figures from HEADGEAR with animation from J.C. Staff. This is a mecha anime for mecha anime fans.

Finally, we discussed Mao, an anime scheduled for 2026 from Sunrise that Ferreira told me to watch out for just because we’re both excited to see what the studio does with a property not tied to Inuyasha.

Speculating for shows that haven’t been announced but that should be announced, Ferreira told me she would love to see an anime adaptation of The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All (often referred to as the Green Yuri among fans). While an anime adaptation has been announced for this one, no studio or details have been confirmed.

For me, I maintain my desire for an adaptation of My Dad is the Queen of VTubers, which, as Ferreira confirmed, has some “sly references” and small references to VTuber culture, would make a perfect 13-episode anime. Also, I won’t stop asking for a Sweat and Soap anime adaptation until my demands are met.

The streaming wars heat up

However, it is difficult to discuss the future of the anime industry without talking about the way most people watch it, which is through streaming. And the two biggest players in the anime streaming industry are, by far, Netflix and Crunchyroll. When I asked which company was likely to win over fans, Ferreira turned the tables back on me.

“That’s a good question because I have a question for you now; what makes you think that it’s just going to be between Netflix and Crunchyroll?”

It wasn’t something I totally expected to be asked – mainly because I was meant to be doing the interviewing here – but I cited the semi-open conflict between the two companies and the fact that they already control 80% of the anime streaming market outside of Japan. However, there is room for companies like Hulu to do something interesting in the anime space. “They have some classic anime that you can’t stream anywhere else, like Sailor Moon and Macross,” I explained. “They can market themselves on ‘Do you like classic anime? We got it.’ But they won’t.”

“Alright, and yeah, because this is one where there’s no easy answer, because, personally, depending on how the chips fall next year, I can see it going either way,” Ferreira added. “And, as such, I really can’t make a major prediction on this just because it’s so uncertain. However, I’d like to point out a couple of things that I remember off the top of my head.”

“Firstly, Trigger with Panty and Stocking is streaming with Amazon [Prime Video]. Big West is streaming solely with Disney for their entire Macross library. Hulu acquired a lot of surprising exclusives over the past year, including Go Go Losing Ranger, Sandland, Bullet Bullet, Medalist, and Tokyo Revengers. Retro Crush is pulling the Discotech catalogue, so they’re basically, like, the source for the classics. But at the same time, Hidive has the MBS Network first-look deal.”

“So, I really think that there won’t be a simple ‘Will it be Netflix or Crunchyroll?’ going either way, because I think we’re seeing a lot of jockeying throughout the entire industry as the Japanese industry and the Western industry are trying to find the new normal that we find ourselves in.”

The future of anime fandom from a journalist’s perspective

Of course, this is Future Fest and we’re looking, as the name implies, to the future. So, how do we see the anime industry changing in the next several years? What does the future of anime fandom look like? According to both Samantha Ferreira and me, it looks much more casual than it does now.

“I’d say in 2 years, you’re not gonna see many huge changes, just because it’s not far enough ahead and we are kind of hurtling towards that right away,” she told me. “The media is never gonna change that greatly unless, say, a big disruption comes through.”

However, in the next five years, she sees a big change coming in how anime fans interact with their favorite shows and how they interact with each other. “In 2008, when the industry was going through its crash period, we got to see the entire industry and, along with it, the community rapidly change because we saw a lot of the players either fold up shop or a lot of your information sources change drastically overnight. And people start to change over, you start to see dedicated news sites give way to social media… podcasts give way to YouTube.”

“You start to see the online ecosystem really change shape and change form as a new generation of people come in, and I think the next five years in particular are going to be incredibly transformative as the current generation starts to step back. The Millennials give way to Generation Z and Gen Z is gonna give way to Generation Alpha, and with them, we’re gonna start seeing the way that we interact with fandom and with the people in the community is a lot different.”

The example that comes to mind for both of us here is Solo Leveling, which is consistently cited as one of the biggest shows on Crunchyroll, setting all sorts of records for ratings and viewership. However, neither of us can see any chatter about it in the traditional spaces where fans gather. “If you go into your typical fan spaces – Blue Sky, Instagram, Tumblr – you’re not going to see much chatter about it. However, it’s a huge property, a lot of fans, a lot of people really love it.”

This is something that I’ve noticed when going to conventions: you don’t see Solo Leveling cosplays or even much fan art in Artist's Alley. There is very little pop culture impact in the traditional spaces where I’m used to seeing it. For me, it signals a change in how intensely people interact with anime. “I think you’re going to get more casual fans,” I said. “Cause, like, when we were growing up, you couldn’t be a casual fan of anime because so much effort into finding it that it became your whole personality.”

“Oh yeah,” Ferreira agreed. “You were the anime person if you were an anime fan.”

“But I think it's like you’ve got casual sports fans,” I said. “You got people who don’t really have a favorite team but watch the Super Bowl, kind of thing.”

“’Oh, I don’t have a favorite show. I’ll watch The Apothecary Diaries,’ something like that,” Ferreira agrees. “And I am all for that.”

With that casual fandom comes greater pop culture penetration. Both of us agree that in the next five or ten years, anime will become as much a part of pop culture as many of our classic films. “We’re going to get to a point where more people know who Goku is than Rocky Balboa,” I predict. “And I think that’s wonderful.”

“I mean, that’s something a lot of us growing up really have worked towards throughout our careers,” Ferreira told me. “Like, going to anime journalism back in 2002, my big dream was to see it go to something that everyone could enjoy. Everyone could find something to love in anime and we’re starting to see that dream realized and that excites me to no end.”

Predicting the future classics

The final part of our time together was spent trying to look to the future and decide which shows airing today will have a long shelf life and which won’t stand the test of time. After all, sometimes huge shows fall flat at the end (Game of Thrones) or just age like fine milk (Friends). Samantha Ferreira immediately dropped a couple of shows that have been high on my list for this year.

“I really have to give nods to The Summer Hikaru Died – cool, ungeneric romance – BanG Dream! Ave Mujica, and Zenshu for being the big standouts for 2025,” she said. “If you’re going with, like, continuations, Apothecary Diaries and My Dress-Up Darling, because all these shows that I mentioned are absolutely wonderful experiences with fantastic writing and characters and generally cool and varied approaches to the way they approach anime.”

She was more reserved in her praise for Dan Da Dan and City, saying that they are both “striking, gorgeously produced shows that do genuinely fascinating things with animation as a medium. City, with its approach to visual storytelling. Dan Da Dan, with the way it just brings forth the otherworldly, the spirit, that otherworldly atmosphere with the use of color, lighting, framing, and camera work, is both absolutely brilliant in their own way. It just really depends on if they can stick that landing.”

For big shows that might not stick around, we both thought Solo Leveling was a bit too one-note, which, combined with its truly bizarre ending, might not have the same impact in ten years that it does now. “I would say Fire Force would be one that goes down that hole because, especially with its newest season, its emphasis on some generally worrisome fanservice,” Ferreira admitted. “Lazarus and Gundam GQuuuuuX, both being shows that were seen as having a lot of potential but just being unable to really seal the deal and capitalize on what they had in front of them.”

For me, I’m more hesitant to lavish praise on My Dress-Up Darling and Dan Da Dan. As someone who has read the manga of both, I can say that neither delivers in the later chapters. My feelings on My Dress-Up Darling are well documented, and I can honestly say that Dan Da Dan never gets better than the Evil Eye arc that has already aired in the anime. However, I’m totally open to both doing something to surprise me.

The future, however, is a strange and unknowable thing, which is exactly why it is so exciting. Even with our years of covering anime, we never know exactly what it is going to capture the fandom’s imagination in the future. After all, I never thought we’d see Panty & Stocking back on our screens, but I’m so happy to have been wrong.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions