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Lakeith Stanfield gets anime-ted in first look at Netflix's Yasuke and more
Netflix has already dipped its toes into the pool of live-action adaptations of popular anime — including Death Note and the upcoming Cowboy Bebop — but it's also diving headfirst into producing its own animated content.
The worldwide streaming service announced five upcoming projects at its Anime Festival in Japan this week, and offered fans a glimpse of the 11 other series that have been in development so far. Among them were first look at images from the upcoming Pacific Rim series and character designs from Yasuke, an anime centering on the (very real) African samurai of the same name, which will premiere in 2021.
Created by director and executive producer LeSean Thomas (The Boondocks, The Legend of Korra), the series stars Lakeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You) as the titular character struggling to live a peaceful existence after a lifetime of violence in a "Japan of magic and mechs." He once again gets pulled into the fight after a local village becomes the center of a conflict between warring daimyo (Japanese feudal lords), and he's tasked with transporting a mysterious child, who is being targeted by dark forces.
Netflix tweeted a first look at the character designs for both Yasuke and Nobunaga Oda, another famous figure from Japanese history, as he's the daimyo responsible for uniting half of the provinces in Japan under his rule. Takeshi Koike (Lupin the Third) serves as the character designer for the series, with animation from Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association (MAPPA), the same studio that worked on Attack on Titan: The Final Season.
Fans were also given sneak peeks (below) of the CG anime Resident Evil series, Vampire in the Garden, Godzilla Singular Point, Transformers: War for the Cybertron Trilogy, Trese, B: The Beginning Succession, Spriggan, Baki Hanma, as well as a trailer for the series EDEN.
Among the five new shows mentioned are the amusement park-set Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure, a modern adaptation of the comedy manga Thermae Romae Novae, action-packed survival story High-Rise Invasion, the four-part Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, and the yakuza-turned-househusband tale The Way of the Househusband.
No release dates have been set for any of these series beyond the fact that they'll all be premiering in 2021.
