Safety Net Look Up Versus Trending Now Say More Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag Mashable @Home All Series A beef that started over a'One Piece' flag has turned into an ugly meme war over the West's idealized image of Japan. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . The Elon Musk -owned X has a new main character -- or, this time, two entire countries.

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It's the language through which Aya and Mitsuki first connect, with their shared tastes providing the foundation for a relationship neither quite knows how to define. And fittingly for a love story built around a shared obsession with rock music, the anime has some serious grunge credentials. Nirvana's 1991 track Breed will serve as the opening theme, a collaboration that even has Dave Grohl's stamp of approval. In a special interview with Arai, the former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman said he believed Kurt Cobain would have loved the series, citing its message, aesthetic, and overall vibe. After all, Cobain was never one for rigid gender norms.

Japan's strongest media export makes a solid case for your attention span. Despite its ferocious popularity, people still tend to swear off anime entirely. These are usually the people whose reference of the medium pertains to a certain stereotype or to the few seconds of anime they once saw on a computer somewhere in the early 2000s. But Japan has been producing some of the most emotionally resonant and visually audacious storytelling in contemporary media for half a century, and a great deal of it looks nothing at all like the stereotype it holds. Start with self-contained films you can knock out in a single evening before graduating to series worth committing wholly to.

The example shows the learned IT map with high w =2 0 approximating the ET map.

AI-driven pirated manga is booming. Can AI also help curb it? Japan's content industry -- which includes anime, manga and video games -- is a major export the country. Such exports were valued at ¥6 trillion ($38 billion) in 2024. When it comes to pirated manga online, which is being produced quicker thanks to artificial intelligence, government officials in Japan are planning to fight fire with fire and use AI to crack down on it.

It's time to lock in and let your winter arc begin Have you ever locked in? No, not finding yourself locked in a lift or a bathroom. We're talking about locking IN - the phrase you might have seen on social media or heard people saying lately. To lock in is to focus; to endure short-term pain for long-term gain - whether that be building your body or your business. Do it today - not tomorrow.

We present AniME, a director-oriented multi-agent system for automated long-form anime production, covering the full workflow from a story to the final video. The director agent keeps a global memory for the whole workflow, and coordinates several downstream specialized agents. By integrating customized Model Context Protocol (MCP) with downstream model instruction, the specialized agent adaptively selects control conditions for diverse sub-tasks. AniME produces cinematic animation with consistent characters and synchronized audio visual elements, offering a scalable solution for AI-driven anime creation.

The example shows the learned IT map with high w =2 0 approximating the ET map.

Nissan revamps ProPilot to rival Tesla's driver-assist technology Nissan Motor is on a mission under new CEO Ivan Espinosa to rebuild its business, and while refreshing its lineup is a key part of that, so is winning back customers who demand cutting-edge technology. Leveraging its partnership with Wayve Technologies, a U.K.-based artificial intelligence startup backed by SoftBank Group, Nissan is preparing to launch the newest generation of its ProPilot driver-assistance system during the fiscal year ending March 2028. The automaker says the most advanced iteration of its driver-assist technology will be on par with Tesla's Full Self-Driving, which despite its name requires human supervision and intervention. While the systems still amount to Level 2 autonomy -- meaning a person must always be ready to take over -- ProPilot amounts to Nissan's best foot forward in contending with the U.S. EV giant and Alphabet's Waymo in the race to build self-driving cars. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.