Shinpachi Shimura Keeps the Crown, Glasses and All
Shinpachi Shimura is Gintama's straight man, a young man who works at the Yorozuya odd-jobs shop to learn Gintoki Sakata's samurai spirit. His whole silhouette comes down to a pair of wide oval frames. Readers who voted for him barely talked about the character. They talked about the frames.
The long-running joke that the glasses are the real Shinpachi is, as one respondent put it, close to a Gintama institution, with spinoff variants like "a human wearing glasses." Another voter walked through the gag's greatest hits: only his frames turn pink in the gender-swap arc, the glasses vanish instead of the boy himself in Gintama: The Final, and he nearly blinks out of existence after losing them in the SKET DANCE crossover episode. One reader pushed back on all of that, praising how Shinpachi matures after meeting Gintoki and facing stronger enemies instead of staying a punchline forever.
Japanese entertainment site Anime! Anime! runs this survey every year for Glasses Day, observed in Japan on October 1 because the kanji numerals 一〇〇一 look like a pair of spectacles. The 2026 edition of the poll drew 146 responses between September 29 and October 1, split almost evenly by gender, with roughly 35 percent each from voters under 19 and voters in their 30s.
Conan's Eyewear Is Actual Detective Hardware
Conan Edogawa took second with about 6 percent, his fourth consecutive year in that slot. The premise still does plenty of work for him: he is high school detective Shinichi Kudo, shrunk into a grade-schooler after being fed a poison, and the oversized black frames covering half his face are one of Professor Agasa's inventions, a criminal-tracking device with several built-in functions. Voters pointed to the eavesdropping feature and how often the glasses carry an investigation, calling Conan the first character who comes to mind when the subject is anime glasses.
He also got real frames this year. Japanese eyewear brand Zoff opened preorders for its Zoff | Detective Conan collection on June 1, 2026, with designs referencing APTX 4869 and the Cafe Poirot logo.
Tenya Iida of My Hero Academia and Koharu Nanakura of Aikatsu Stars! tied for fourth. Iida's entry came with the most specific detail in the whole poll: the Class 1-A president at U.A. High School keeps a row of identical spare glasses in his dorm room, stocked up for the next pair that hero work destroys.
Walpurgisnacht Rising Puts Three Characters on the Board
Third place, at about 4 percent, went to someone with no name at all. Girl A (少女A) appears at the opening of Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Walpurgisnacht Rising, which opened on August 28, 2026 in Japan and in North America through Aniplex of America and is still screening. The voter comment describes her transforming through the lizard phone and fighting wraiths in the world where Homura Akemi became a devil, then reads her frames as a pointed echo of the ones a younger Homura used to wear.
Homura herself tied for sixth, where one reader reached for the fan nickname "Megahomu" for her braided, bespectacled version and argued that the awkward, single-minded core survives whatever form she takes. The film's other new magical girl, Shi Chōka (紫丁香), voiced by Shion Wakayama, tied for 10th, with one voter drawn to the strict, serious personality her glasses suggest.
Outside the ranking, the comments ranged wide. Masumi Ageo, the teacher from Crayon Shin-chan, got credit for running the trick in reverse, timid with the glasses on and brutally blunt the second they come off. Kamanosuke, the designated goofball of the Ten Braves in Sunrise's Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers, drew a vote for his triple-bridge frames, which he takes off before arming up, leaving one reader to wonder whether they are purely fashion and to wish for a style debate with the equally fashion-minded Shion. Satoru Usagiyama from Wonderful Precure! was singled out for episode 36, "Tokubetsu na Wonderful," where Iroha's reflection lands in his glasses during the confession scene. He also appears in the Detective Precure feature that opened in Japan on September 18, 2026.
Looking Ahead
Gintama is the easiest of the three to catch up on from outside Japan. Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames hit Netflix worldwide on August 27, 2026, roughly six months after its February 13 theatrical opening, and the Super Blaze Edition (超炎上版) revival is in Japanese cinemas now. Walpurgisnacht Rising is still in theaters, with Aniplex of America handling the North American release and IMAX screenings running across 37 countries.
Anime! Anime! has already opened its next rounds of voting, including polls on characters who suit miniskirts, karaoke-friendly anime songs, and final-boss characters, all closing October 9, 2026. The full top 10 from the glasses poll sits on the second page of the original article, and the 2025 results are still up for anyone tracking how long Shinpachi's streak can hold.