Yudan Taiteki wrote:What about the use of となる in cases like
来年3月から発売となるアニメ
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I've always found this use indistinguishable from just な or という and I'm not sure it can be replaced with になる, but maybe I'm wrong.
These となる are also the same, so they can be replaced with になる if you ignore the slight difference in nuance.
As for the similarity between な, という, and となる/になる, maybe you're thinking they're all "(noun) that is/do (noun)"? If that's the case, this use of な is a little informal and probably not recommend at classes. Usually it should be part of a conjugated adverb as in 静かな景色 (静かだ -> 静かな), and this is of course proper Japanese. I may be missing something, but at least it sounds informal if you say 3月から発売なアニメ.
As you probably already know, の can also be used as "(noun) that is/do (noun)." I guess most of the time you can swap となる or になる like that with の without changing the meaning of a sentence much, but using too many の is discouraged because it leads to ambiguity in meaning. Also technically the meaning of なる is lost if you use の, though の should be used only when implications are apparent from context.
About という, I think this often adds an "I am explaining this noun" nuance. For some reason, when I read English text filled with unnecessary "that is"s and "which is"s (e.g., I bought a car that is new.), I feel like I'm reading too many という. But it may just be me...
Sometimes という can even imply the attached noun is special in some sense, e.g., 10億円という金が浪費された (The speaker is thinking it's a huge amount of money.). Also, (noun) という (the same noun) as in 窓という窓が and 今日という今日は... is used for emphasis, but probably you already know it.
Anyway, some of usages are quite similar and I don't know if I explained them well. I'd like to know what NileCat and other fluent speakers think of this too.