10 New and Returning Anime...

NEW ANIME 2026 and RETURNING ANIME 2026

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Anime fans, we need to talk because some seriously unexpected new and returning anime have just been announced. In this Anime Dungeon countdown, we're looking at 10 upcoming anime for 2026, including highly anticipated sequels, major franchise returns, new anime adaptations, anime release dates, studios, genres, and where to watch.

From mystery and supernatural anime to fantasy, isekai, sports, martial arts, action, time travel, VRMMORPG and legendary shonen franchises, this list covers some of the biggest anime coming in Fall 2026.

New Original Anime Project...

L  O  N  A

Original TV Anime Series by Akiko Nogi and Takashi Katagiri

Premieres in Spring 2027!

Director Takashi Katagiri who attracted attention with the theatrical release of SPY×FAMILY CODE: White has teamed up with Akiko Nogi, screenwriter of numerous hit titles such as Unnatural, MIU404, and The LAST MILE, to produce the original TV anime LONA.

Posuka Demizu, the acclaimed manga artist and illustrator famous for The Promised Neverland, will be in charge of the original character designs. A star-studded team of top creators from across various media has assembled for the project, including Hiroko Sebu, who has composed music for countless films. Animation production will be handled by WIT STUDIO, the studio behind Attack on Titan and SPY×FAMILY. Kazuki Yamanaka, known for his work on SPY×FAMILY and Bubble, will serve as the animation producer. WIT STUDIO will take the helm as production committee, overseeing both the planning and production of the anime.

A neuroscience adventure series depicting researchers confronting their world by connecting with the unresolved emotions left behind by the deceased. 

A broken world in the not-so distant future.

Humanity is facing a new incident.

"We’re being attacked by humans who should be dead."

The government has decided to request a specialized organization to deal with this situation. The Laboratory of Optics and Neural Analysis, commonly known as "LONA."

Researcher Ao and her apprentice Sango will try to get to the bottom of the mystery by analyzing the brains of the dead.

What do people think of, and what do they leave behind before they die? Countless memories engraved in the neural circuits. What did they see in those deep depths?

Anime Viewing Schedule for August 15, 2026

 A N I M A T R I X   N E T W O R K
Saturday, August 15, 2026

Fountaindale Public Library

VIEWING SCHEDULE

          11:15 - 12:05   Smoking Behind the Supermarket

                                        With You 3-4

          12:05 - 12:55   Black Torch 3-4

          12:55 - 1:30     Club Meeting

          1:30 - 2:15       Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia 3-4

          2:15 - 3:30       Sparks of Tomorrow 3-4

          3:30 - 4:20       Goodbye, Lara 3-4

          4:20 - 4:45       Ghost in the Shell (2026) 3-4

"En garde!"

 

Fountaindale Public Library
300 W. Briarcliff Road
Bolingbrook, IL 60440 

Peggy J. Danhof Board Room

(Second Floor)

 

From 11:15 AM to 5:00 PM

All anime presented are fan-subtitled unless otherwise noted.

Don't miss these exciting anime series: Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura

* ANIME DESCRIPTIONS ARE BELOW *

"We met before. But I still don't know you..."

Theme Song for

GOODBYE, LARA

Lara, a mermaid princess who is beloved by her father, the Sea King, and her sisters, enters into a forbidden love with a human prince and aspires to live with him on land. She drinks a potion created by Grace to become a human and lives with the prince, while being warned the potion expires if she fails to experience true love. However, the prince rejects Lara after learning she is a mermaid, and she vanishes into foam due to the potion's effects and discovers her kingdom has collapsed. Lara is resurrected in Lake Biwa two hundred years later under a trial set by Grace, and she sets out to find true love again and rescue her kingdom.

Studio Ghibli's New Anime Short...

 

Celebrating a Legendary Artist...

MAMORU OSHII

(Born August 8, 1951)

Happy Birthday to Mamoru Oshii

Director of Ghost in the Shell, Angel's Egg, 

and one of Japan's most influential filmmakers.

When Mamoru Oshii was offered the opportunity to adapt Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in the Shell". At first, the assignment held little appeal. A cyberpunk police thriller seemed an unlikely vehicle for his interests. But as Oshii immersed himself in Shirow's premise, he recognized something more compelling beneath its genre framework: an opportunity to examine how the rapid expansion of digital networks and information technologies was beginning to reshape the boundaries of human consciousness and identity.

As Oshii and screenwriter Kazunori Itō developed the adaptation, they quickly concluded that Shirow's irreverent sensibility was fundamentally at odds with the film they envisioned. The original 1989 manga balanced its philosophical ideas with manic comedy, punctuating tense action with slapstick, fourth-wall jokes, exaggerated chibi caricatures, and the playful antics of the Fuchikoma spider tanks. Nearly all of these elements were removed.

The most profound transformation was reserved for Major Motoko Kusanagi herself. Shirow's heroine is impulsive, outspoken, and often disarmingly playful; Oshii and Itō reconceived her as a figure defined by stillness, introspection, and profound existential isolation. Her emotional reserve became an extension of the film's central inquiry into the uneasy relationship between body, mind, and machine. Oshii reinforced this conception through the animation itself, instructing his artists to minimize Kusanagi's blinking, lending her an almost uncanny stillness that subtly underscores her distance from ordinary biological life. Oshii transforms what might have remained a conventional science-fiction thriller into something far more reflective: a meditation on memory, mortality, and the increasingly fragile distinction between the human soul and the digital systems that surround and ultimately redefine it.

Next Club Meeting is August 15, 2026

A N I M A T R I X   N E T W O R K

Peace Before the War...

M O N T H L Y   M E E T I N G

 
Fountaindale Public Library

300 W. Briarcliff Road

Bolingbrook, IL  60440

Peggy J. Danhof Board Room

 (2nd Floor)

Saturday, August 15, 2026

11:15 AM - 5:00 PM

 

We will be in the BOARD ROOM on the Second Floor.

 
Hope to see everyone there!

 

A Viewing Schedule will be posted soon.

 

(Click below for maps)

Time to Wake Up From This Nightmare!

DREAMLAND

Ever since his moth­er died in a fire, Ter­rence has seclud­ed him­self in an emo­tion­less world.

He goes through his dai­ly teenag­er life apa­thet­i­cal­ly… with one excep­tion! The sim­ple sight of a flame plunges him into a world of fear, an awak­ened ver­sion of his night­mares – for, every time he falls asleep, he help­less­ly relives the trag­ic event, thus rekin­dling his pyro­pho­bia. Until that one night he can’t bear it any ­more and stops run­ning away from the dev­il­ish flames. Lit­tle does he know that, by doing so, he over­came his great­est fear and became a Trav­el­er: a very spe­cial kind of Dream­er, able to explore Dream­land, the dimen­sion born from mankind’s dreams… and nightmares!

“The trump card was… a witch.”

Witch and Hound

Based on the original novel "MAJO TO RYOKEN" by Rainy Kamitsuki, published by Shogakukan Inc. Original character designs by LAM

The dark fantasy novel "MAJO TO RYOKEN" by Rainy Kamitsuki, originally published under Shogakukan’s Gagaga Bunko imprint, is officially getting an anime adaptation. The series is directed by Takanori Tsujimoto, whose works span both live-action and animation, including the live-action Ultraman series and the animated feature film HYPNOSISMIC -Division Rap Battle-. Character designs are by Kengo Saito, who has contributed to numerous acclaimed productions at Yostar Pictures.

Produced by the rising animation studio TriF Studio, the series promises stunning visuals and intense action.

"All men have limits... I ignore mine."

BATMAN: KNIGHTFALL PART 1

DC, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment present Batman: Knightfall, a three-part movie event bringing to life one of the most iconic and beloved sagas in the rich history of Batman comics.

Part One of the trilogy, Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall premiered at the 2026 edition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival with an official release planned for later this year. When the mysterious behemoth known only as Bane frees Batman’s entire Rogue’s Gallery from Arkham Asylum, the Caped Crusader is pushed to his mental and physical breaking point. Based on characters from DC and the DC Comic Book Event, Batman: Knightfall by Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, Dennis O’Neil, Peter David, Jo Duffy, Jim Aparo, Graham Nolan, Norm Breyfogle, and Jim Balent.

Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall is directed by Jeff Wamester and written by Jeremy Adams. Rick Morales serves as Supervising Producer alongside Producers Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau. Sam Register and Michael Uslan are Executive Producers. 

The voice cast stars Anson Mount as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Michael Mando as Bane, Pablo Schreiber as Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael.

AI Rendition of an Anime Classic...

BATTLE of the PLANETS

In Japan, Battle of the Planets is known as Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, written in Japanese as 科学忍者隊ガッチャマン (Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman). G-Force, a five-member superhero team, fights to defend Earth and its space colonies from the threat of the planet Spectra.

We hunt for powerful relics...

ESLUNA: The Crown of Babylon

The fantasy world of Esluna is ruled by descendants of a sacred bloodline, and technologically powered by the advanced relics of their ancients. MAEVE is a relic hunter, aided by her robot sidekick and a reformed sky pirate. When her mentor and surrogate mother CAZ is kidnapped by the rogue monk SPARROWWOOD, Maeve has no choice but find a powerful relic known as the CROWN OF BABYLON, rumored to have the power to bring back the dead. She teams up with BATAAR, an old friend with telekinetic powers and an agenda of his own, and together they try to find the crown, save Caz, and stop Sparrowwood from endangering the lives of everyone they know.

Watch on Prime or AppleTV

About Cloudrise Pictures: Cloudrise Pictures is an indie Canadian animation studio founded in 2017 by animator and director Denver Jackson. The studio is currently still young and growing as we produce more passion projects. Current films include shorts: Cloudrise, The Wishing Jar, SOS, a webseries: Esluna: The First Monolith, and our first feature film: Esluna: The Crown of Babylon.