How Gachiakuta Plans to Tame Japan’s Halloween Frenzy

Shibuya after Halloween usually looks like a confetti bomb made of convenience-store wrappers. This year, an anime about cleaning up literal garbage is jumping in to help fix the real thing. Yes, really.

Gachiakuta x Shibuya Zero Waste Project 2025

The TV anime Gachiakuta is teaming with the city-led Shibuya Zero Waste Project 2025 to keep the streets from turning into a trash heap on Halloween night. Volunteers will hit the sidewalks with Gachiakuta-branded trash bags, plus the basics: gloves and tongs. The vibe is very on-the-nose in the best way — the show is about cleaning up humanity's waste, and now its fans (and anyone else who joins) get to do that for real.

"Cleaners, Assemble"

That is the actual tagline for the effort, and in the context of this series, it tracks. Volunteers will be treated like the show's Cleaners — the folks who handle junk removal and fight the nasty creatures born from it. According to Essential-Japan, the collaboration is being singled out as a smart, inventive way to tie the anime's core theme into a real civic cleanup. Hard to argue with that.

For context, Shibuya's post-Halloween trash problem is not new. The district has tried multiple approaches over the years to manage the morning-after mess, and the Zero Waste Project is one of the big umbrella initiatives. The Gachiakuta partnership is this year's twist: keep the usual cleanup muscle, add some anime flavor, and ideally leave nothing on the ground when the crowds clear out.

The timing is very coordinated

The collab announcement landed alongside the official synopsis and preview images for episode 15 of Gachiakuta's second season, titled "Hey, Seriously". Marketing synergy? Sure. But if you watch the show, the pairing makes perfect sense.

Quick refresher: what Gachiakuta is actually about

The series follows Rudo, a kid bent on avenging his adoptive father, Regto, after a mysterious entity kills him. Then things go sideways: Rudo gets blamed for the death — essentially accused of murdering the man who raised him — and is dumped into the Ground, the place where people from the Sphere (basically the 'Heaven' above) throw their trash.

Down there, some humans can charge objects with power by cherishing them; those people become Givers. Givers often join the Cleaners Association to sort, scrub, and, when needed, take down Trash Beasts. It is a grimy world, but it has rules — and surprisingly tender logic about what we value and why.

• Title: Gachiakuta
• Studio: Bones Film
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Current run: Season 2, Part 2 (aka the Trash Storm Arc)
• Key new episode: Season 2, Episode 15 — "Hey, Seriously"
• Release date noted for this run: July 6, 2025
• Where to watch: Crunchyroll

Where the story is right now

Part 2 arrives after 14 episodes and kicks into the Trash Storm Arc. The Cleaners have been ambushed and scattered, and now they are staring down the Raiders — including the group’s boss, Zodyl, and his crew. The Amo situation is the big question mark: what happened to her, and what do the Raiders want? That thread is set up to cause chaos in the best way.

So, yeah, an anime about trash is helping keep Shibuya from drowning in it on Halloween, while its second season barrels into a big arc about, well, even more trash and the monsters it creates. It is neat when the branding writes itself — and even better when it also means fewer beer cans underfoot.

Gachiakuta is streaming now on Crunchyroll.