Crunchyroll is launching its inaugural Anime Future Forum on Oct. 7 at New York’s Javits Convention Center, positioning the gathering as a lead-in to New York Comic Con and a meeting point for the many people who make, distribute, discuss and champion anime.
The scale described for the first event is substantial: more than 90 companies are set to be represented, more than 500 people are expected to attend, and 200 attendees are expected to travel from Japan. The program will include leaders from Toho, MAPPA and Aniplex, alongside filmmakers, performers and online personalities. Rather than presenting anime only as a slate of upcoming titles, the forum is built around the conditions that shape the medium: fandom, technology, storytelling and intellectual-property protection.
That combination matters. Anime’s audience may encounter a series through streaming, theaters, clips, convention spaces, music, merchandise or social communities, while the work itself depends on creative and business relationships that can span countries and companies. A forum cannot settle every issue facing that ecosystem in one day, but it can place people from those overlapping parts of the business in the same room.
A forum designed around anime’s future
Gita Rebbapragada, Crunchyroll’s chief operating officer, linked the event’s origins to the decision four years ago to bring the Crunchyroll Anime Awards to Tokyo. The purpose was to enable more of the creators behind anime to take part as their work was honored. In her account, conversations surrounding that event proved as meaningful as the awards themselves, creating the foundation for a dedicated setting where people concerned with anime’s future could exchange ideas.
“The Anime Future Forum grew from a simple idea: create a place for those conversations to happen, ideas to be exchanged and the people shaping anime to imagine what comes next together,” Rebbapragada said.
It is a useful distinction. An awards show recognizes completed work. A forum is oriented toward processes, questions and relationships that continue after the attendees leave. The stated aim here is not merely celebration, although fandom remains a central part of the agenda. It is knowledge sharing among people with different roles in the medium.
Crunchyroll’s framing also avoids reducing anime to a single genre. Rebbapragada described it as a medium, emphasizing the diversity within it as anime grows. That point has practical weight: a medium can contain many kinds of stories, audiences and production approaches. Discussing anime solely as one uniform category can obscure the range of creators and fans involved. A forum explicitly examining fandom and storytelling has room to address that range rather than treating audience growth as a simple, one-directional trend.
Readers interested in another major anime project can also see what is known about The One Piece anime reboot and its planned first-season scope.
Related coverage includes Crunchyroll’s Anime Future Forum Opens in New York.
The four discussion tracks
The Anime Future Forum’s agenda is organized around four themes: fandom, technology, storytelling and IP protection. Each is broad, but together they describe the path from an idea and a production team to a work that reaches viewers and becomes part of a larger cultural conversation.
Fandom: the audience is part of the ecosystem
Fandom will receive a particular spotlight. In this context, fandom means more than viewership totals or a social-media following. It encompasses the communities that gather around characters, series, studios and creators, as well as the ways people recommend works, share interpretations and participate in event culture.
Crunchyroll’s stated ambition is to do more with fans while contributing to the anime ecosystem. The word ecosystem is significant because it acknowledges interdependence. Fans support attention for shows; creators and studios make the work; distributors help it reach audiences; and related businesses operate around that entire relationship. The forum’s planned mix of studio leaders, entertainment figures and influencers suggests a conversation that is not confined to one side of that system.
For fans, the most meaningful result may not be a single headline. It may instead be a clearer recognition that community participation deserves serious consideration in conversations about anime’s direction. That does not mean every fan preference can or should dictate creative decisions. It does mean the people who care about anime are being treated as part of a broader dialogue rather than only as consumers at the end of a pipeline.
Technology: innovation alongside creative integrity
Technology is another core subject, and Rebbapragada described it as an area where people can share knowledge about current innovation. She also stressed the need to protect creative integrity.
Creative integrity refers to safeguarding the essential artistic character of a work and the intentions behind it. The supplied details do not specify which technologies or individual tools will be discussed, so it would be premature to assume a particular debate or policy outcome. Still, the pairing of innovation and integrity establishes an important principle: technological change is not being treated as separate from creative responsibility.
That is especially relevant in a medium defined by craft, collaboration and storytelling. Technology can change how material is made, managed or brought to an audience, but a discussion of its value is incomplete without considering the people and creative work at its center. By making technology a dedicated conference track, while identifying integrity as a concern, the forum signals that the issue is not simply whether innovation exists. The question is how the people using it can learn from one another while protecting the creative work anime depends on.
Storytelling: lessons beyond a finished production
Storytelling sits at the heart of the forum’s structure. Rebbapragada said the program includes storytellers from different types of content who will share stories, successes and mistakes. That is a notably practical framing. Successes can point to methods worth understanding; mistakes can offer lessons that are often less visible in a polished, finished film or series.
Storytelling here should not be understood only as plot. At a gathering of creators and industry participants, it can also mean how people develop ideas, communicate a project’s intent and learn through the act of making work. The event’s emphasis on exchange does not promise a blueprint for successful anime. Instead, it creates a setting where different experiences can be compared without assuming every project, audience or creator faces identical circumstances.
That approach aligns with the forum’s wider purpose. If anime is a diverse medium, then useful creative discussion must allow for varied perspectives. A storyteller’s experience may not become a universal rule, but sharing the circumstances behind a success or a mistake can still be valuable to someone working from a different position.
IP protection: protecting the work and the rights around it
The fourth track, IP protection, focuses on a foundational but often technical area. IP is short for intellectual property: creative works and the rights connected to them. In an anime context, that can encompass the underlying material and the protected elements that make it identifiable as a particular work.
The available information does not outline specific panels, proposals or enforcement measures, so the forum’s precise treatment of IP protection remains unclear. What is clear is that the subject appears alongside fandom, technology and storytelling rather than in isolation. That placement reflects how rights and creative work are connected. The ability to sustain and safeguard a creative property is part of the larger environment in which studios, creators, distributors and audiences operate.
For attendees and observers, this track may be one of the most consequential precisely because it is so intertwined with the others. Storytelling needs a framework that recognizes the work being created; technology discussions must account for creative rights; and fans encounter anime through official channels and the wider cultural spaces that form around a property. The forum’s four tracks are distinct, but they are not separate worlds.
Who is expected to take part
The announced studio representation includes Taichi Ueda, film producer and executive officer at Toho; Manabu Otsuka, president and CEO of MAPPA; and Atsuhiro Iwakami, group CEO and representative director of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., as well as chairman of Aniplex Inc.
James Gunn is also set to participate, as are Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson, the directors of Sony Pictures’ upcoming animated sequel Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. Amber Glenn, Big Sean and Jordan Howlett are listed among the anime influencers attending. Sony leadership is also expected to support the event.
That roster illustrates the forum’s cross-industry design. Toho, MAPPA and Aniplex represent major organizations within anime, while the participation of filmmakers connected to an upcoming animated Spider-Man sequel broadens the conversation around animation and storytelling. Influencers add another connection to the fan-facing side of the event. The details do not establish what any individual participant will say, but they do show an intention to gather people whose work and audiences intersect in different ways.
Crunchyroll and the larger Sony picture
Crunchyroll says it has the largest anime library in streaming. It has operated under Sony Pictures Entertainment since 2021, when Sony acquired Crunchyroll and merged it with its existing Funimation unit. The platform has since become Sony’s biggest footprint in streaming and a source of distinctive content for the company.
The company’s connection to theatrical anime is also part of the backdrop. Crunchyroll partnered with Sony Pictures on the theatrical release of 2025’s Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, which set U.S. box-office records for an anime feature. That result is evidence of anime’s reach across more than one viewing format, even though the forum itself is not framed as a box-office event or a product showcase.
Instead, the Anime Future Forum appears to be a relationship-building initiative supported by a company with significant streaming, theatrical and corporate links. Its value will depend on the discussions it enables and on whether participants carry useful connections and ideas beyond the Javits Center. The supplied plans do not promise announcements, new projects or policy changes, and it would be wrong to read those outcomes into the event. Its stated contribution is more foundational: bringing people together to learn from one another.
For an inaugural gathering, that is a focused mission. Anime’s future will not be determined by a single conference track or a single room of attendees. But creating space for creators, companies and fan-connected voices to discuss technology, stories, rights and community is itself a meaningful statement about what the medium requires: not only more attention, but more conversation across the people who help sustain it.
