The analysis of character appearance frequency is essential for understanding narrative structure, character prominence, and story progression in anime. In this work, we introduce OregairuChar, a benchmark dataset designed for appearance frequency analysis in the anime series My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. The dataset comprises 1600 manually selected frames from the third season, annotated with 2860 bounding boxes across 11 main characters. OregairuChar captures diverse visual challenges, including occlusion, pose variation, and inter-character similarity, providing a realistic basis for appearance-based studies. To enable quantitative research, we benchmark several object detection models on the dataset and leverage their predictions for fine-grained, episode-level analysis of character presence over time. This approach reveals patterns of character prominence and their evolution within the narrative. By emphasizing appearance frequency, OregairuChar serves as a valuable resource for exploring computational narrative dynamics and character-centric storytelling in stylized media.

The much-lauded action-RPG NieR: Automata is being developed into an anime series, Square Enix has announced. A teaser trailer shows a potential glimpse of how it will look (and not much else), and the developers also tweeted an image of the lead character 2B and her Pod companion robot. It appears that the story will closely follow the plot of the original game. "The stage is a distant future in which human beings are routing to the moon in front of the overwhelming force of'machine life forms' that aliens unleash," according to the developer's blog post. "The '2B' belonging to the newly organized android unit'Yorha' will put himself into a fierce battle to recapture the Earth."

For being one of the most iconic and influential anime series of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion is also one of the most confusing; as of the franchise's most recent film, released on Amazon Prime earlier this month, the series has officially ended four times. But the new--and truly final--movie, Evangelion: 3.0 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, delivers a real capstone to the series, as well as a new argument for how to watch the series as a whole. In case you're totally unfamiliar with the series, the gist is as such: Three teenagers, Shinji Ikari (Megumi Ogata), Asuka Langley Shikinami (Yūko Miyamura), and Rei Ayanami (Megumi Hayashibara), serve as the pilots of giant robots known as Evangelions. Though their initial function was to fight against mysterious beings known as Angels, they know serve as pawns between the organization NERV, led by Shinji's father Gendo (Fumihiko Tachiki), who seeks to cause a mass extinction in order to reunite with his late wife, and WILLE, a group of former NERV employees who are now NERV's only opponents. The Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, of which Thrice Upon a Time is the last, serves as a sort of re-telling of the events of the original TV series.

What was once thought limited to the realm of animation is set to become reality in Yokohama this fall when an 18-meter mobile Gundam robot steps into action. Fans of the iconic anime series will be able to get an up-close look at the 25-ton machine at Gundam Factory Yokohama, a 9,000 sq.-meter facility set to open at Yamashita Pier on Oct. 1 for a year. Tickets for the facility will go on sale in July, though the price has not been disclosed. Other details remain a mystery, such as the exact movements the robot will be able to perform using its 24 fully functional joints. Gundam Factory Yokohama will consist of two areas: a 25-meter-tall Gundam-Dock that will serve as its maintenance site, and a two-story building with shops and event space.

Born in the city of Nagoya in 1970, he spent his teenage years devouring popular anime series of the time, including "Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam," the sequel in the well-known Gundam franchise that first aired in 1985, and "Dirty Pair," a sci-fi adventure featuring a sexy female duo working as "trouble consultants." This was the heyday of the VHS cassette, and Goto would spend his allowance renting anime tapes, many of which were made specifically for release on home video format to meet the period's surging demand for anime content. It wasn't a hobby he could openly share with his classmates, however. This was years before the otaku image underwent a makeover of sorts, thanks to the popularization of the fan culture and its global acceptance as a source of soft power. "Otaku of our generation were typically way down in the'school caste' system, and girls tended to look at us with disdain," he says, referring to the invisible hierarchy in the classroom determined by different status symbols.

Elon Musk's latest Twitter revelation has anime fans around the world buzzing with excitement. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted that it's'time to create a mecha,' in a nod to the killer humanoid robots made popular by science fiction and a slew of anime series, including Neon Genesis Evangelion, Code Geass, and Gundam. The seemingly unprompted statement came not long after Musk revealed his appreciation for the wildly successful movie, Your Name, which became the highest grossing anime film of all time after it was released in 2016. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted this week that it's'time to create a mecha,' in a nod to the killer humanoid robots made popular by science fiction and a slew of anime series, including Neon Genesis Evangelion (right), Code Geass, and Gundam Don't start building a doomsday bunker just yet, though; as with many of the eccentric CEO's previous Twitter claims, the latest statement should be taken with a grain of salt. In a refreshing change from his recent headline-grabbing outbursts, Musk sparked a positive conversation about anime on Twitter earlier this week after sharing the trailer for the 2016 anime Your Name, noting that he loves the movie.

Japan's pop culture is dominated by two inextricably linked industries – video games and animation. The twin forces even form part of the country's Cool Japan ambassadorial project, pushing Japanese creativity to a global market. Yet in the west, although anime fandom has grown significantly, we still tend to see the fields as separate, aficionados of one medium only occasionally crossing over to the other. Anime is a powerful storytelling platform in its own right though, and with increased home video releases and a cavalcade of titles available on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Crunchyroll, it's never been easier for players to explore a medium that has inspired thousands of video games over the last 40 years. Here are 10 titles absolutely rooted in gaming culture.

Less than a year since the release of the Assassin's Creed film adaptation, Ubisoft is set to revisit the world of its hit game franchise in the form of an anime series. Producer Adi Shankar claims the show will be his next project, after Netlifx's Castlevania -- making him the go-to guy for animated video game adaptations. Shankar took to Facebook to make the announcement, adding that Ubisoft approached him to create an "original story." That's all we know about the project thus far. Seeing as Shankar managed to assemble an eye-catching roster of talent for Castlevania (including comic book scribe Warren Ellis and Adventure Time's Kevin Kolde) it will be interesting to see who he calls on this time around.