Popverse's top stories

• Spider-Noir creeps, Invincible expands, and Backrooms lurks: Popverse Playlist for May 23-29 2026
• Redemption was never an option for The Deep, explains The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke
• Steel Ball Run wasn't originally published as a new JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but you wouldn't know that from the first chapter [Popverse Jump]

No one delivers more anime to our screens than Crunchyroll, so the streamer’s annual Anime Awards show offers a particular insight into the world of anime at the moment. With the winners in each category decided via a public vote rather than by industry experts, it usually isn’t hard to pick the big winners. The only real surprise from the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2026 was just how unsurprising it was for My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer to walk away with the two top prizes.

The final season of My Hero Academia took home Anime of the Year at the Anime Awards over the weekend. Meanwhile, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle was awarded Film of the Year. Both were obvious choices; My Hero Academia has been a fan-favorite for nearly a decade, and its ending delivered exactly the kind of bittersweet moments that made the whole journey worthwhile. Meanwhile, Demon Slayer Infinity Castle is by far the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time, making more than $800 million since its release compared to the $512 million its predecessor made in 2020.

In fact, the only surprise of the night was the winner of Best Original Anime, which was the uneven Lazarus. We know that things that are left to a public vote will inevitably result in popular things winning over objectively better things like Chainsaw Man or The Apothecary Diaries, but it is still frustrating as a fan who wants to see less obvious titles walk away with trophies.

The Crunchyroll Anime Awards didn’t offer many surprises by giving My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer their top prizes over the weekend, with two juggernauts of anime going out with a bang.

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