>I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.
Work is currently being done on the LANPR branch as part of the GSoC. This branch is meant to replace the Freestyle system which is currently used for line rendering. [0]
Otherwise we already have the "Shader to RGB" node which is extremely useful to create NPR shaders.
There's also an add-on which can be used to deform a mesh based on greasepencil strokes, I assume 2D animators would love this. [1]
If you're interested in blender NPR news I highly recommend following the BNPR Show on youtube. [2]
Wow. Thank you so much. Non-photorealistic rendering is now so amazing. Real-time!
I've been long out of the loop and am delighted to see it's come so far. Ages ago, I had the notion for kid friendly games, contingent on NPR. But I didn't have the maths or design chops to implement it.
Now that the NPR heavy lifting is done, perhaps my notion is feasible.
(I am a 2d artist who spent some time in the 2d animation world around 200x.)