In case you missed it, Crunchyroll just shadowdropped two of 2025’s best anime movies. While Crunchyroll is mostly known for streaming and producing anime TV shows, they’re also heavily involved with anime movies; in recent years, Crunchyroll has typically taken it upon themselves to bring new movies to theaters as opposed to leaving it up to a third party, and in addition to wide releases of popular titles old and new, they also have exclusive, one-day events for more niche films, as well.
Crunchyroll’s work with anime movies is just as important as it is with anime shows, and that’s truer now than ever after a massive reveal. Among the movies Crunchyroll brought to theaters in 2025 were MAPPA’s Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise and Kyoto Animation’s Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved, and surprisingly, both films were shadowdropped on Crunchyroll over the weekend. It’s odd that Crunchyroll didn’t make a bigger deal of things, but with how great the films are, it hardly matters.
Crunchyroll has finally added Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved to its library, and that’s nothing short of amazing. For Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise, the film is a perfect continuation of the anime that uses an alien invasion to tell a surprisingly heartwarming story about the friendship between the main cast, all with an incredible soundtrack and some of MAPPA’s best animation to date. As underrated as it may be, Zombie Land Saga still ranks among MAPPA’s best anime, and its movie is the perfect proof of that.
Naturally, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved warrants similar praise. Not only is the film as gorgeous as one would expect a Kyoto Animation project to be, but putting Kanna in the spotlight did wonders to both develop her character and further highlight the anime’s heartwarming story about found family. It was the first Dragon Maid project in four years, and overall, it was more than a worthy continuation.
The past decade has been great for anime, and that's especially true for anime movies, with a few in particular being nothing but modern masterpieces.
In short, both Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved are amazing movies for how well they combine visual spectacle with heartwarming stories that wonderfully advance the narratives of their original anime. They’re some of the best Crunchyroll anime movies a person could ask for, and at long last, it’s easier than ever for fans to watch them.
What’s especially great about how Crunchyroll released these new movies is the timing. With how late into 2025 the movies came out, with their English releases being even later, it only took a few months for them to go to streaming, far less time than it usually takes anime movies. Granted, licensing from the original Japanese publishers probably plays a part in things, but this shows that anime movies don’t have to take ages to go to streaming, and that should be far more common than it currently is.
As anime has grown in both quality and popularity, anime films have become one of the best ways to experience the medium, and Crunchyroll’s latest acquisitions, Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved, are two of the best examples yet. They were truly two of the best anime movies to come out in 2025, and it’s nothing but great that far more people can see them now that they’re on Crunchyroll.
