Technologies

The Absolute Best Anime You Should Stream in December

Keep watching My Hero Academia, Blue Lock and these other titles this month.

The 2022 anime season is about to wrap up, but there is still time to enjoy this year’s releases on streaming. Perhaps you’ve already seen One Piece Film: Red at your local theater. And as an anime fan, you’re may be captivated by the weekly drops of Chainsaw Man right now. But December offers titles you can watch at home as we patiently wait for 2023 to bring us the Attack on Titan finale, Kaguya-sama: Love is War and a new season of Jujutsu Kaisen.

Here’s a look at what you can stream this month on Crunchyroll, Netflix and other streaming services.

My Hero Academia Season 6

With Shigaraki on a rage-filled mayhem mission using the Metahuman Liberation Army, the stakes are high for our beloved Izuku «Deku» Midoriya, U.A. High and the pro superheroes. New quirks, new challenges and a new war await us in My Hero Academia. This season is a must-see, and the show airs on Hulu or Crunchyroll on Saturdays at 2:30 a.m. PT (5:30 a.m. ET) with the dubbed version dropping at 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET). Watch the latest installment into the spring of 2023.

Chainsaw Man

One of the most exciting arrivals this year, Chainsaw Man airs subbed episodes on Crunchyroll Tuesdays at 9 a.m. PT (12 p.m. ET) and the dubbed version debuts on Oct. 25, 12:30 p.m. PT (3:30 p.m. ET). The popular manga has finally been adapted for the small screen and is already earning high marks from critics and fans. Watch Denji become the hybrid devil hunter he was never meant to be and all the frenzied, bloody mess that’s attached to this wild story. Season 1 has 12 episodes that you can stream on Crunchyroll or Hulu into January.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Part 3

The final batch of episodes for this story arc hit Netflix on Dec. 1, following the release of part 2 in September. Considered one of the most difficult manga storylines to adapt for the small screen, Stone Ocean draws to a close. All 14 episodes are available to binge now.

Blue Lock

Forget Ted Lasso. Blue Lock’s soccer saga pits the top high school players in Japan against each other in a rigorous program to find the nation’s greatest striker. Watch Yoichi Isagi on his journey each Sat. 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET) on Crunchyroll. This season will feature 24 episodes total, broken down into two consecutive cours.

Dragon Age: Absolution

If you haven’t checked out Netflix’s series yet, you should add it to your binge list this month. Based on the video game, the six-episode show takes viewers to Tevinter, a place no one has seen on screen before. Dragon Age: Absolution premiered on Dec. 9.

To Your Eternity Season 2

To Your Eternity comes back with more melancholy and compelling storytelling about Fushi’s struggles as a shape-shifting immortal. This time, he can’t keep his commitment to solitude when he faces the Nokkers and needs help to do it. To Your Eternity season 2 will feature 20 episodes and begins streaming on Crunchyroll on Oct. 23 at 5:30 a.m. PT (8:30 a.m. ET).

Bocchi the Rock!

Since its debut on Oct. 8, Bocchi the Rock! has found a loyal audience on Crunchyroll. Adapted from the popular manga of the same name, the comedy series follows Hitori Goto, an introverted girl with super guitar-playing talents. She winds up forming a rock band but has to learn a few things about herself and interacting with those around her. If you prefer music-centric stories with a comical slant, check it out on Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. PT (12:30 p.m. ET).

Millennium Actress

An award-winning movie, Millennium Actress follows two documentarians Genya Tachibana and Kyoji Ida as they interview the actress, Chiyoko Fujiwara. The family-friendly oldie but goodie joins the Crunchyroll lineup on Dec. 15.

Mob Psycho 100 Season 3

It’s the final season of Mob Psycho 100, and fans get to see Shigeo — aka Mob — figure out the next stage of his life. That’s the overarching theme of this season, but the story will also carry him, Reigen, Ritsu and Teru into another adventure featuring a now-revered broccoli tree. Watch to find out how they handle the divine sprout. Mob Psycho 100 III kicked off on Oct. 5 and has 12 episodes that air Wednesdays at 9 a.m. PT. (12 p.m. ET). The season ends this month.

Lookism

A Korean anime, Lookism follows Daniel, a high school kid who is bullied for his appearance. After waking up in a new body, he explores and experiences «lookism,» a term that describes stereotypes, preferential treatment or discrimination based on looks. Season 1 debuted on Netflix on Dec. 8.

Arknights: Prelude to Dawn

An adaptation of the popular video game, Arknights: Prelude to Dawn premieres on Crunchyroll on Oct. 28. Meet the Rhodes Island team and a slew of other characters from Terra as they navigate conflict, disease and power in their dystopian world.

Technologies

Yes, This Swimming RoboTurtle Is Adorable. It Also Has an Important Environmental Mission

Beatbot is best known for making pool-cleaning robots, but it was its swimming robot turtle that won our hearts at CES 2026.

Few things in life have made me feel more privileged and awestruck than the opportunity to swim with sea turtles in their natural environment. The way in which these gentle creatures navigate through their underwater world with their deliberate and careful fin strokes is utterly mesmerizing to watch.

It’s a distinctive style of movement — so much so that when I saw Beatbot’s RoboTurtle swim across a water tank on the show floor at CES 2026, I knew that this wasn’t simply just a pool cleaner robot with turtle features tacked on. This was a studied example of biomimicry in action.

The reason for this is that the company’s engineers went on a two-month expedition to study sea turtles in their natural environment, Beatbot’s Eduardo Campo told me as we watched Turtini (the team’s affectionate nickname for RoboTurtle) splash around in its pool. «We did a lot of motion capture, like the things they use in movies, because we need to develop those joints that it has,» he said.

This isn’t RoboTurtle’s first time at CES — it also appeared in 2025 as a static concept. This is the year, however, it’s found its fins, so to speak. Not only can it swim, but it can also respond to hand gestures: I throw it an OK gesture, and it dances in response. But as cute and limber as it is, RoboTurtle is a robot with an important mission.

RoboTurtle is an environmental research tool, built with input from researchers and NGOs, which can go where humans or other machines cannot for fear of disturbing complex and delicate underwater ecosystems, particularly coral reefs. It can move silently and naturally in a way that won’t scare wildlife, monitoring water quality and fish numbers with its built-in camera.

«One of the groups that we’re working with, they want to study the coral reefs in near Indonesia,» said Campo. «There was a very big incident over there with a boat that came up onto a coral reef and it disrupted the environment, [so] they want the least intrusive robot possible.»

The group wants to deploy RoboTurtle for certain periods every year to monitor the recovery of the coral and monitor the fish population, he added. Beatbot is currently training the built-in AI to give RoboTurtle monitoring and recognition skills.

At CES, I watched RoboTurtle paddle about only on the surface of the pool, but it can also dive down up to five meters. However, it needs to resurface to send data and its GPS signal back to base, much like a real turtle that needs to come to the surface to breathe. This also gives it a chance to recharge via the solar panel on its back.

Even though I was impressed with RoboTurtle’s swimming ability, Campo estimates that the Beatbot team is still a year and a half away from perfecting its technique, with the robot ready for full deployment in between three to five years.

CES 2026 is a show where tech with a real purpose feels scarce, so it sure is refreshing to see a company use its expertise to build something designed with a sustainable future in mind. It might be a while until we see RoboTurtle take to the seas, but I’m glad that I got to witness it at this stage of its journey.

Technologies

These Tiny Robots Are Smaller Than Grains of Salt and Can Think, Move and Swim

Despite their size, the robots can navigate liquids, respond to their environment and operate without external control.

Robots smaller than a grain of salt? It sounds like science fiction, but researchers have developed autonomous microrobots that can move through liquids, sense their environment and operate independently using only light as a power source.

The microrobots, developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, measure roughly 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers. Yet they can detect temperature changes, follow programmed paths and function independently for months at a time.

Their work was reported this week in two scientific journals, Science Robotics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

«We’ve made autonomous robots 10,000 times smaller,» senior author Marc Miskin, assistant professor in electrical and systems engineering at Penn Engineering, said in a statement. «That opens up an entirely new scale for programmable robots.»

Powered entirely by light, the robots don’t move using mechanical limbs. Instead, they generate tiny electrical fields that push ions (electrically charged particles) in fluid to create motion, an approach better suited to the unique physics of the microscopic world, where traditional motors don’t work.

Unlike earlier microrobots, these devices combine sensing, computing, decision-making and movement in a single, self-contained system at an extremely small scale.

Previous efforts in microrobotics have often relied on external controls, such as magnetic fields or physical tethers, to guide movement. These new microrobots, however, incorporate their own miniature solar cell-powered processors, allowing them to respond to their environment, communicate through patterned movements visible under a microscope and carry out tasks without outside direction.

Potential applications include monitoring biological processes at the cellular level, supporting medical diagnostics or helping assemble tiny devices. Because each robot can be mass-produced at very low cost, the technology opens new avenues for research and engineering at scales that were previously unreachable.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Jan. 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 7.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought today’s was a tough one — I couldn’t solve too many of the Across clues and had to move on to the Down clues to fill in the answers. Also … look at the answer for 3-Down! Are we using Gen Z slang now as if everyone knows it? Anyway, if you want all the answers, read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.