Shinichiro Watanabe and LeSean Thomas Team Up for NYC Anime Events in November

Anime directors Shinichiro Watanabe and LeSean Thomas are teaming up for a weekend of events in New York City this November. The series is called Foreign Exchange 2025 and will take place November 20 through 22 at the Japan Society. Watanabe is best known for Cowboy Bebop and his current series Lazarus, while Thomas directed Canon Busters and Yasuke.

The weekend opens on November 20 with a behind-the-scenes conversation between Watanabe and Thomas about the making of Lazarus at 6 PM. That same evening at 8 PM there will be a screening of Lazarus’s first episode alongside the short films Baby Blue and A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot, with an introduction by Watanabe. November 21 brings a screening of Canon Busters with Thomas in conversation afterward. November 22 closes out with a Cowboy Bebop screening and a dialogue between both directors about the series and its influence.

Both directors carry significant weight in the international anime and animation space. Watanabe’s Japanese industry legacy and Thomas’s work bringing Black American creative sensibilities into animation have made them two of the more talked-about figures in the field. Foreign Exchange 2025 is one of the more thoughtful anime event concepts in recent memory.

My take: This is the kind of event that fans in New York should not pass up. Getting both Watanabe and LeSean Thomas in the same room talking about how they each came to their work is genuinely rare. If you are anywhere near the city that weekend, it is worth going.