Crunchyroll has announced major expansion plans for its global Ani-May 2026 celebration, including retail partnerships, gaming collaborations, convention events, and large-scale promotional campaigns worldwide.
At the same time, the company also revealed plans for a new Anime Future Forum leadership summit focused on anime’s expanding role in entertainment culture. Interesting.
These developments really highlight just how mainstream anime has become. Many seem to question whether this is a good thing or not, or miss times when anime itself was still niche in the West.
Though what was once considered niche is now deeply embedded in global pop culture alongside Marvel, Star Wars, and major gaming brands.
Industry experts increasingly believe anime’s next major frontier is not simply streaming growth, but complete integration into worldwide entertainment ecosystems including fashion, live events, gaming, and theatrical distribution. The next level of worldwide anime industry seems to be taking this route!
We've previously seen anime collabs with companies like McDonalds and more before...imagine as time passes, and more people becoming introduced to anime as they grow up, how much we'll see anime among worldwide pop culture even more!
I certainly don't mind this, though I do believe that content made in Japan should continue to be owned and controlled by Japanese creators, and not attempt to appeal to the West in various ways like making major changes to content, characters, or story to fit Western culture. We have seen this in the past with disastrous adaptations and censorship.
See Crunchyroll's Ani-May 2026 details here.
How do you feel about anime continuing to become even more mainstream, integrating into society as a whole, even more than it is today?
