Each May, the entertainment company Crunchyroll has designated the month as Ani-May, a celebration of all things anime.
Before we say good Sayōnara to this month, here are a few things that happened in the anime world, from silly to meaningful. We’ll start with one that shows the impact of this medium.
Attack on Titan wins Anime’s first Global Impact Award
Crunchyroll has been hosting the Anime Awards for the past nine years, and this year in Tokyo, the Attack On Titan was honored with its first ever Global Impact Awards. The award celebrates “visionary creators and groundbreaking works that have left an indelible mark on culture, history and the hearts of audiences around the world.” For the past ten years, the emotionally charged and action-filled dark fantasy Attack on Titan, based on the best stilling manga by Hajime Isayam, certainly did that. It wrapped up its ten-year, four season run in 2024 with a big screen movie Attack on Titan: The Last Attack this year gaining a 99% fan rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven’t seen or read about this anime, you’ve been working hard to avoid it. It is everywhere and it is magnificent.
Solo Leveling Nearly Sweeps the Anime Awards
One of the things about the Anime Awards is it is very fan-based. This year, the award show had a record-breaking 51 million fan votes from around the globe. As a result, the dimension hopping tale, Solo Leveling broke its own record of amassing hundreds of thousands of fan votes in a short period of time. The anime was not only crowned with Anime of the Year, it gained Best New Series, Best Action, Best Main Character, Best Score and Best Ending Sequence among other honors. Not too shabby for a new anime based on a Korean manhwa (webtoon), not a Japanese manga.
Cells At Work Gets a Live Action Movie
I wish we were issued the manga Cells at Work as textbooks in my advance level biology classes, because this Akane Shimizu manga and anime series did a better job of showing me how our cells fight against disease and germ invaders to our human body. Until I watched the anime, I never thought I’d say “white blood cells and macrophages are bad ass”. And they are. This year, the trailer for the Netflix release of the live action movie based adaptation was released, with Japanese action star Takeru Satoh in the coveted role as Neutrophil U-1146. Unlike the anime where we never see the person the cells inhabit, the live action goes in a more Osmosis Jones direction, giving a face to the hosts. Don’t expect an Alice in Borderland or Rurouni Kenshin level adaption, but it looks fun. It was released in Japan in December, and will hit Netflix on June 13.
McDonald’s Breakfasts for Anime Characters
How come it’s always the foreign McDonald’s that get the cool ads and promos? Well, at least for Ani-May and the Anime Awards they gave us all a good promo. Last week, the company’s various social media accounts did a fun tribute to some favorite anime characters with by creating what their own preferred breakfast meals would be. Unfortunately, these are just fictional concepts, but it they are cool. Check them out. My personal favorite is the Kaiju No. 8:
Before June arrives, take advantage of the last week in May and it’s month-long celebration of the storytelling and creativity that is anime. These are things that certainly deserve a full month of fun.