One of the biggest conventions – Anime Expo 2022 Los Angeles that spanned across the 1st of July to the 4th of July had an abundance of hot news from big names that was announced over the weekend.

While you might not be able to catch up with all of the things that were announced over the 4 days, here are some of the bigger news titles that you might have missed out on:

Panty & Stocking Season 2

The long awaited sequel to the show filled with crude and sexual jokes was announced during the Studio TRIGGER panel on Saturday. During the panel, the staff showed a short preview trailer featuring an animated shot of fan favourite Anarchy Sisters with their usual banter and antics, but was not shown to the public as of writing.

As of time of writing, there is no other in depth details regarding the sequel other than the second season will be produced by Studio TRIGGER and is directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi who was also the director of the first season of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, along with other shows such as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Promare.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War

While the Bleach manga has been completed, the anime is still not done with adapting the manga A trailer along with visuals on the Bleach manga’s 55th Volume – the Thousand Year Blood War arc will be adapted and highlighting it would be the fight between the Shinigami and Quincy.

The cast of staff who will be working on the anime were also announced with the trailer. Chief animation directors:

• Michio Hasegawa who worked on Shadows House.
• Sei Komatsubara who did Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity – Grand Temple of Time: Solomon
• Satoshi Sakai who worked on Akudama Drive.

The series will be premiering this October 2022.

TRIGUN STAMPEDE

The classic sci-fi comedy action Trigun which first aired way back in 1998 will be getting a whole new CG animated remake titled Trigun Stampede. While 3D animation in anime has not gotten the best track record, but it is done by the legendary studio Orange who worked on both Beastars and

In the trailer, they showed off an entire redesign for the main protagonist Vash The Stampede which gives him a more modernised look.

Rather than making it a total reimagining of a new series, the remake will be based on the manga which focuses more on the backstory of Vash from the original series.

The cast of the new remake has also been revealed with:

• Vash’s Voice Actor – Yoshitsugu Matsuoka who is also known to voice Kirito/ Kazuto Kirigaya from Sword Art Online
• Knives Million who is voiced by Junya Ikeda who also voiced Jo Kido from Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna.
• Young Vash is voiced by Tomoyo Kurosawa who is also known to voice Phosphophyllite from Houseki no Kuni.
• Young Knives by Yumiri Hanamori who voiced Ai Hayasaka from Kaguya Sama.
• Rem Saverem by Maaya Sakamoto who also voices Ciel Phantomhive from the Black Butler series.

The First Slam Dunk

The legendary sports anime Slam Dunk has announced a brand new anime movie. Along with the announcement of the movie, a movie poster was revealed along with it. The First Slam Dunk movie has been set to release in theaters in Japan on December 3rd. But there is no news on an international release for the movie as of now. The trailer for the movie will be released on the film’s official Youtube Channel Page which has yet been announced.

The list of staff also has been announced which features:

• Takehiko Inoue who is the original series creator, will be in charge on writing and directing
• Yasuyuki Ebara who is in charge of character design and animation director.

• Daiki Nakazawa as CG director

• Yuta Ogura as CG producer

• Kazuo Ogura as Art Director

• Yota Tsuruoka, Koji Kasamatsu as sound directors

• Katsuhiko Kitada, Naoki Miyahara, Toshio Ohashi, and Yu Kamatani as technical directors.

Solo Leveling

During the Crunchyroll Industry Panel, the long awaited popular korean manhwa Solo Leveling is set to have an anime adaptation by A1 Pictures whose known projects included Kaguya Sama Love is War, 86, Darling in the Franxx, etc.

Along with the announcement came a trailer which featured edited panel strips from the original manhwa as well as the list of cast who will be working along in the adaptation.

The main cast features:

• Shunsuke Nakashige as director who was the episode director for Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld
• Noboru Kimura as head Writer who did script writing for Accel World

• Tomoko Sudo as character designer who worked on Fate/ Apocrypha
• Hiroyuki Sawano who worked as a music composer for Attack on Titan

There is no concrete date for the release of the adaptation but similar to the other teasers, it will be coming sometime next year.

VShojo Japan

During the VShojo panel, the CEO Justin Ignacio, or better known as “The Gunrun” in the community has announced that they will be branching out Vshojo with a Japanese branch with the addition of two new members, one of which is the legendary independent Vtuber – Kson, as well as an entirely new member  Amemiya Nazuna.

Both Kson and Amemiya were introduced in a short video animation that was showcased during the panel:

After the video was released, Kson herself showed up during the panel in person, introducing herself to the crowd in a cosplay of her vtuber model along with her iconic line.

And those are pretty much the biggest highlights of Anime Expo 2022. While the event is still going on until the 4th of July, most of the bigger news have already been announced the weekend. For more information, here’s the link to Anime Expo’s official Twitter Link.

As a fellow weeb, it is extremely heartwarming to see the anime community grow into such a big norm where events such as these garner up huge crowds and I wish the growth of the anime community continues growing!

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