Product Watch | April 2026

Since the last product watch, the state of physical anime in North America has been interesting to observe. Crunchyroll (CR) has aggressively been reducing the number of titles they carry on their store front (not just for anime, but for manga as well) as well as just not committing to printing/reprinting titles from their catalog. There is a great write up on this you should read by Jerome Mazandarani at Anime News Network that goes into more detail. Right Stuf continues to be very much missed.

CR is not the end all be all of the market, however. Sentai Filmworks continues to grab great titles recently re-releasing the beloved classic Azumanga Daioh on Blu-ray. In exciting news, they will release Heavy Metal L-Gaim on Blu-ray June 16th! This set will include the 54-episode television series and 3 OVAs. This will be the first time this Tomino work has been released in North America and I’m super excited for this release.

AnimEigo has some great titles coming out soon, with the consumer run of Dagger of Kamui, Alien Nine, and Hotori: Simply Wishing For Hope. Speaking of AnimEigo, the MediaOCD storefront has become the new home for Discotek titles, both for new releases and many of their delisted titles. The program is called Discotek Deep Dive https://www.mediaocd.com/category/discotek-deep-dive and is truly a great program to both keep availability of titles as well as keep down costs for the community.

Oh, I forgot to mention that MediaOCD also stocks Media Blasters titles as well. Media Blasters has their own storefront where many of their offerings are exclusive. This of course includes some of their more adult offerings, but what I’m interested in is their release of a NEW GARO TITLE IN 2026!?! That is right, they have released Garo: Taiga on UHD and Blu-ray. Tokusatsu fans have been winning the past few years and I’m praying that Taiga sells well for MB so that we can get some more Garo titles brought over.

I haven’t been as locked in with new releases of manga as I used to be in years past. This is partly due to me committing to binging my backlog, but a lot of it is also just attributed to no longer having a dedicated spot that I keep tabs on new releases. Right Stuf use to be excellent for this, but I’ve already mentioned the issues with CR in the anime section. Did I also mention that their storefront runs like hot garbage? It runs like hot garbage. Also, many of the titles I collected are no longer listed. Fantastic.

Enough complaining. I’m glad to see that so many of the older titles who have been getting new printings for North America are continuing to chug along. Both City Hunter and Cat’s Eye are about to release their third volumes. Fighting for Tomorrow (Ashita no Joe) is soon to drop its 5th. I’m very happy to see that Dragon Quest The Mark of Erdrick is still printed and soon to release its fourth volume. I’m still bitter about The Adventure of Dai being silently canceled on its fifth volume. I enjoyed reading that series so much. Volume 5 at least ends by closing out the first arc of the series, but there’s so much more story left to be told! It is what it is I guess… hold up. Checks listings…

VOLUME 6 COMES OUT ON THE 7TH?!?!? ON THE SEVENTH?!?! ON THE SEVENTH DAY???!

Hallelujah. It’s been 4 years since Vol. 5 dropped. They’re finally printing them. You all don’t understand how momentous this is for me. I’m going to be greedy though. If Viz can finally print the rest of this story, Tokyopop can finally give us the rest of Sengou Youko. Let’s make it happen.

Gaming is the backlog that I’ve been attacking the most and I’ve tackled so many massive and fantastic titles. Master Detective Archive Rain Code, Poison Control, Daemon X Machina, Kowloon High School Chronicle, The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy, Card En Ciel, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie, Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder’s Revenge…you get the point.

I’m currently going through Fantasian Neo Dimension, Hironobu Sakaguchi’s latest title, and it’s honestly a masterwork RPG. This is coming off my strong addiction with Pokemon Legends ZA, which deserves its own separate article from me.

I know I’m just blabbing about stuff I’ve played and not new products. I’ll list those upcoming titles below. I’ve just had so much fun recently playing through all these titles. Speaking of playing through titles, the Analogue 3D finally shipped out at the end of last year. Which means I have a very nostalgic time ahead of me with my favorite system of all time. Speaking of, the N64 celebrates its 30th birthday this year. Crazy how time flies.