Biggest Announcements From Anime Expo: Cyberpunk Edgerunners S2 Announced, JoJo Part 7 Anime Staff Revealed, and More

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Gets New Trailer For Second Season, Staff Announcement

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s upcoming second season got a new trailer ahead of its January 2026 release, and if this brief minute is anything to go by, it seems that the show will remain as visually stunning as ever.

While the talented Keiichirō Saitō won’t be directing the latest (instead serving as “director support”), Tomoya Kitagawa will be taking over as a first-time series director. He was the director for three episodes (2, 8, and 25) from the previous season. Meanwhile, Madhouse will continue to animate the show, and Evan Call remains the series composer. Crunchyroll will once again be streaming the series outside of Asia.

Why It Matters: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End quickly proved a critical and commercial hit, leveraging its melancholic tone and skilled execution to pull us into this fantasy world. While it is surprising to hear that Keiichirō Saitō won’t be returning as director, as many assumed his involvement with Frieren was why he stepped away from directing Bocchi the Rock, Tomoya Kitagawa seems like a solid replacement, thanks to many of the upcoming action sequences in the source material.

Staff Revealed For JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run

david productions revealed the staff for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run, with many familiar faces at the helm. The studio will once again be handling animation duties, with Part 5: Golden Wind co-directors Yasuhiro Kimura and Hideya Takahashi returning to those roles. The director of Part 6: Stone Ocean, Toshiyuki Kato, is the series director. Yasuko Kobayashi is once again handling series composition, with Daisuke Tsumagari (the animation director on Golden Wind)

Why It Matters: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is one of the most influential and popular manga/anime series of all time, and this latest adaptation will mark David production animating volumes 81-104 of the series. After this adaptation concludes, that will leave Part 8: JoJolion (volumes 105-131) and the ongoing Part 9: The JoJoLands (132-137).

The series remains remarkable in that, despite its ubiquity in Japan, it remains utterly unreplicated —a unique blend of high fashion, complex puzzle battles, music references, and absurdist comedy. Additionally, while each part of JoJo is somewhat independent of the rest, Part 7 is particularly disconnected, taking place in an alternative universe from the rest of the series.

As for the staff announcements, while Part 6 is one of the best entries in the series in terms of its storytelling, there were a few dips in visual flair throughout this adaptation, so hearing that a lot of the Part 5 staff are returning is probably a good sign.

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Gets New Trailer

The upcoming Chainsaw Man film, which will pick up where the television series left off, got a new trailer that showcased Reze’s explosive introduction. The teaser highlights Denji’s ongoing “romantic” struggles, alongside the film’s main theme, “IRIS OUT,” by Kenshi Yonezu.

It will be distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment worldwide, opening in the United States and the United Kingdom on October 29, after debuting in Japan on September 19, and the rest of the world on September 24. The movie will adapt the ”Bomb Girl” arc from the manga, which spans chapters 39-52. The 12-episode first season of the show adapted chapters 1-38.

Why It Matters: The Chainsaw Man manga has been a sensation, subverting battle shonen tropes as author Tatsuki Fujimoto has blended tragedy and comedy into a truly unpredictable mix. In 2022, MAPPA aired a 12-episode adaptation, which met a slightly complicated response. On the one hand, it was largely very well received by both critics and audiences, thanks to the studio’s highly technical animation and a lineup of voice acting performances that brought out the comedy of its source material.

However, despite proving popular, it wasn’t quite the mega-hit some were expecting it to be MAPPA CEO Manabu Ohtsuka commented that he was “unsatisfied” with the show for not proving as popular as the company’s previous adaptation, Jujutsu Kaisen. MAPPA took the unusual route of financing the series themselves instead of raising funds through a production committee, a risky move that means they fronted the cost of its success. While it more than broke even, it didn’t prompt many sales through its Blu-ray release, getting most of its popularity from streaming.

Additionally, some fans of the source material disliked the highly technical, “realistic” approach that MAPPA took with the adaptation, believing that a looser, scratchier style would have better matched the original art style and tone of the story. Seemingly in response to these criticisms, the trailer for the upcoming film showcases an art style closer to the manga. In short, after a lengthy three-year hiatus, this film has a lot to prove.

Other Announcements

As for series announcements, Daemons of the Shadow Realm, a manga written and illustrated by Full Metal Alchemist author Hiromu Arakawa, will be receiving an anime adaptation from Bones Film. Beyond this, an adaptation of The Vermillion Mask was announced, the battle shonen series Black Clover is coming back, and Reincarnated as a Sword is getting a second season.

There were also a number of release window reveals: Cloverwork’s original film Grotesqqque, Beastars Final Season Part 2, and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 4 are slated for 2026. Virgin Punk: Clockwork Girl, which is the first part of an upcoming anime TV series, is coming to Japan on June 27, 2025, and will be “coming soon” in the States courtesy of Aniplex USA. Those outside of Japan and some East Asian countries got bad news regarding the currently airing The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity, which won’t be coming to Netflix worldwide until September 7.

Lastly, we got another teaser for Science Saru’s Ghost in the Shell adaptation, which is still planned for 2026, as well as a trailer for Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 4, which is also coming out next year.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.