Saturday, July 25, 2026

Studio Ghibli made something you can only see by buying a plane ticket. The studio confirmed a new short film, Night in the Valley of Witches (Majo no Tanima no Yoru), directed by Goro Miyazaki (the Earwig and the Witch and Ghibli Park designer) with veteran animator Akihiko Yamashita. It premiered July 8 exclusively at the Cinema Orion theater inside Ghibli Park's Grand Warehouse in Japan, with no streaming or theatrical plans announced. Ghibli using original shorts as a park exclusive is a familiar play from the Museum shorts era, but it still stings for the millions of fans who will never legally see it (via CBR).

JoJo's most demanding arc finally has a real schedule. STEEL BALL RUN, the seventh and most acclaimed part of Hirohiko Araki's franchise, will roll out its second stage weekly on Netflix starting September 25, an 11-episode run covering the second and third legs of the cross-country horse race. Netflix committed to the weekly cadence after fans revolted over the vague drip-feed that greeted the first stage, a single 47-minute episode dropped back in March. The david production adaptation reunites Golden Wind co-directors Yasuhiro Kimura and Hideya Takahashi (via GamesRadar).

This is it. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity, the fourth and final cour of the arc that revived Tite Kubo's soul-reaper series in 2022, premieres today, July 25, on Hulu in the US and Disney+ internationally. The 13 episodes wrap the entire Bleach anime, with Tomohisa Taguchi directing at Pierrot Films, composer Shiro Sagisu returning, and jo0ji and 9Lana handling the opening and ending themes. After The Separation and The Conflict spent two cours setting the board, The Calamity is the payoff, and for a series that limped to an unfinished end a decade ago before this remake, an actual conclusion is the whole point (via ComicBook.com).

The summer race for fan favorite is heating up three weeks in. Anime Corner's Summer 2026 rankings hit their week 3 poll, the running temperature check on which of the season's premieres are actually landing with the global audience rather than just the hype cycle. Weekly community polls like these are the closest thing the industry has to a real-time approval rating for a fresh cour (via Anime Corner).

Collectors have a busy end of July. Crunchyroll's July home video wave is headlined by Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 3 on Blu-ray on July 28, both a stacked limited edition (art book, eight art cards, three acrylic keychains, sticker sheet) and a standard release, plus an Apothecary Diaries Season 1 SteelBook sold exclusively through the Crunchyroll Store the same day. Earlier in the month, Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon Season 2 and The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You Season 2 both landed on disc July 14 (via CBR).

Bleach's finale is a streaming exclusive, and that matters for where it lives. Viz Media confirmed The Calamity goes straight to Hulu in the US and Disney+ overseas rather than the usual anime homes, the same Disney pipeline that carried the earlier Thousand-Year Blood War cours. Viz and Fathom did give the arc a theatrical taste first, running the opening three episodes in US theaters from June 25 to 29 before today's stream (via Variety).

Tokyo wants to turn anime into a bigger export machine, and it is putting public money behind it. The Japanese government is weighing roughly 11.5 billion yen in subsidies split among 15 companies, with the stated goal of tripling overseas content sales to 20 trillion yen by 2033. Reported beneficiaries include manga publisher Shueisha and Crunchyroll, the Sony-owned streamer. State cash flowing to a US-headquartered platform shows how blurred the line between Japanese and global anime business has become (via Honolulu Star-Advertiser).

The boom is real, but it is not lifting everyone. A Teikoku Databank analysis found anime studio revenue jumped 23% to 339 billion yen in 2024, yet only 37% of studios actually grew, with the money pooling at the top: 78% of primary contractors turned a profit versus just 57% of the subcontractor shops that do much of the grunt work. Piling on, Cool Japan Fund's cumulative investment losses swelled 41% to 54 billion yen (about 332 million dollars) for the year ending March 2026, a reminder that betting on this industry is not a guaranteed win even now (via Animenomics).

Getting Steel Ball Run's sound right meant reinventing what a JoJo score sounds like. Anime Corner sat down with composer Yugo Kanno, who has scored the franchise since 2012, and producer Noriko Dohi to break down the making of david production's take on Araki's most beloved arc. The conversation digs into how the team approached a Western-set, horse-racing story that looks and feels nothing like the earlier parts, the kind of behind-the-scenes detail that rarely surfaces until well after a show is out (via Anime Corner).

The Philippines' biggest cosplay event is loading up its music bill. Cosplay Mania 2026, organized by Cosplay.ph, revealed the performers and special guests for its anime music concert, the live-show centerpiece that has become as much a draw as the cosplay competitions themselves. For Southeast Asian fans, a homegrown anisong concert lineup is the rare chance to see the music side of the fandom staged locally rather than only in Japan (via Anime Corner).