Once again, the Bam Smack Pow team is here to bring you the biggest anime news of the week that was. As the beginning of the Spring 2025 anime gets closer and closer, more announcements are helping us get a clearer picture of that season. Crunchyroll is also gearing up for the 2025 Anime Awards as fan voting for this year's winners opens.
Keep reading for the biggest anime news of the first week of April.
HIDIVE announces Spring 2025 dubs
Following last week's announcement of the slate of Spring 2025 subbed and dubbed anime premiering on the service, HIDIVE has announced several more dubs set to debut on the service for the upcoming season. A few of these series have streamed on HIDIVE in the past and are now returning, presumably thanks to HIDIVE's production studio Sentai Filmworks re-acquiring the licenses.
The dubs announced by HIDIVE include:
• deceptively scary horror-fantasy anime Made in Abyss
• reverse isekai romantic comedy Monster Musume
• spin-off series Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria
• supernatural comedy series The World God Only Knows
• mecha Sci FI series RahXephon
All of these series are scheduled to debut or return to HIDIVE on April 22 in their entirety, both with subtitles and dubbed in English. Additionally, HIDIVE has previously announced that Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! and From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! will debut their English dubs on April 9 and April 16, respectively. The English dub of Plus-Sized Elf is already airing every Wednesday on HIDIVE.
Crunchyroll announces Anime Awards nominees and presenters
2025 will see the ninth annual iteration of Crunchyroll's Anime Awards. In anticipation of the ceremony on May 25, Crunchyroll has revealed the list of both nominees and presenters. Fans can vote for the winners until April 10.
The announced presenters include:
• Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things
• Japanese actors DEAN FUJIOKA, Kanata Hongo and Mayu Matsuoka
• VTuber Ironmouse
Crunchyroll has also announced that the 2025 ceremony will be hosted by Sally Amaki and Jon Kabira. The full list of presenters can be viewed on Crunchyroll here.
Additionally, the listed categories for the 2025 Anime Awards include Anime of the Year, Film of the Year, Best Continuing Series, Best New Series, and the best anime in several genres including Romance, Comedy, Action, Isekai, Drama and Slice of Life. Fans can vote for the nominees in each category on the Anime Awards website here.
Dan Da Dan confirms season 2 and Evil Eye movie premieres
Anime News Network is reporting that anime distributor GKIDS (who recently brought Studio Ghibli's 1997 classic Princess Mononoke to IMAX screens) has confirmed a June North American debut for the release of the first three episodes of season 2 as the feature-length Dan Da Dan movie Evil Eye, along with sharing the trailer. The movie will release in Asia on May 30, June 6 in North America and June 7 in Europe.
The second season proper of the anime, which has become an instant classic and is widely viewed as one of the best new anime of 2024, will start streaming worldwide in July. Both Crunchyroll and Netflix have confirmed that they will be streaming the series concurrently, which was also the case for the first season of the horror-comedy series.
As always, keep checking in with us here on Bam Smack Pow for all the latest news from Marvel and DC, along with weekly reports of the biggest anime news and another review for some essential anime viewing!