The staff for Sekiro: No Defeat, the new anime based on FromSoftware‘s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice game, began streaming a clip from the film on Thursday. The clip shows Genichiro Ashina’s duel with Wolf.

The Japanese cast members from the game are reprising their roles, including:

Kenichi Kutsuna is directing the anime at Qzil.la. Takuya Satou is the screenwriter. Takahiro Kishida (Durarara!!) is designing the characters. Shūta Hasunuma is composing the music.

Additional staff members include:

The anime’s theme song is “Blu” from composer Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s The Best of ‘Playing the Orchestra 2014’ album.

The anime will screen in theaters in Japan for three weeks starting on September 4.

Crunchyroll will exclusively stream the anime in 2026 worldwide excluding Japan, China, Korea, Russia, and Belarus. The anime screened out of competition at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

The staff issued an official statement in August 2025 confirming that no AI was being used for this anime.

Publisher Activision describes Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice:

Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, and published by Activision, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a third-person, action-adventure game with RPG elements. The single-player game puts players in the protagonist role of a hard-hearted warrior whose mission is to rescue his master, a young lord who is the descendant of an ancient bloodline, and exact revenge on his arch nemesis. Set in the re-imagined world of late 1500s Sengoku Japan; a brutal, bloody period of constant life-and-death conflict, in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice you are the “one-armed wolf,” a disgraced and disfigured warrior rescued from the brink of death.

In the game, players come face-to-face with larger than life foes; unleash an arsenal of deadly prosthetic tools and powerful ninja abilities to blend stealth, vertical traversal, and visceral head-to-head combat in a bloody confrontation.

Take revenge. Restore your honor. Kill Ingeniously.

The game launched for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam in March 2019, and it sold more than 2 million copies worldwide in less than 10 days.

Source: KADOKAWAanime’s YouTube channel, Comic Natalie

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.

Amazon Prime Video posted an early teaser trailer for the live-action series of Saki Hiwatari‘s Please Save My Earth manga on Thursday. The teaser offers a partial glimpse of Alice Hirose (Bubble, live-action Silver Spoon, HYOUKA) as Mokuren.

The series will exclusively stream worldwide on Amazon Prime Video in the fall of 2027. Alice Hirose (Bubble, live-action Silver Spoon, HYOUKA) will star as Mokuren.

Takahiro Miki (live-action Blue Spring Ride, Hodonaku, Owakare Desu, Solanin, We Were There) is directing, and Nana Yamamoto (Vivant, Antihero, Cinderella Complex) is writing the scripts. Moshimoss (Kosuke Anamizu) is composing the music. Amazon MGM Studios is presenting the project, and The Seven collective is planning and producing alongside Kadokawa Daiei Studio. 

Viz Media published the original Please Save My Earth (Boku no Chikyū wo Mamotte or Boku Tama) manga in North America, and it also released the original video anime adaptation. Viz describes the story:

Life’s hard when you’re shy, harder still when you move from your quiet hometown to the bustle of a big city and a new high school. Poor Alice also has to cope with being regularly harassed by the bratty neighbor boy, Rin. Her life turns upside-down when she’s stuck babysitting Rin and the annoying chore ends in unexpected tragedy. What Alice doesn’t realize is there could be a greater force at work than unhappy chance!

Hiwatari serialized the original manga in Hakusensha‘s Hana to Yume magazine from 1986 to 1994. Production I.G animated a 1993-94 original video anime series that spawned a 1995 feature-length compilation and a 2001 music image video. 

Hiwatari’s sequel manga Boku o Tsutsumu Tsuki no Hikari (Embraced by the Moonlight) is set years after the events of Please Save My Earth and follows the son of two of the earlier manga’s characters. It ran in Bessatsu Hana to Yume and Hana to Yume Plus magazines from 2003 to 2014. Hiwatari has been serializing a new sequel, Boku wa Chikyū to Utau, in Bessatsu Hana to Yume and Melody since 2015.

Source: Comic Natalie

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.

This year’s 40th issue of Akita Shoten‘s Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine announced on Thursday that Shinobu Seguchi‘s Oedo Fire Slayer (Hikuidori Ushūboro Tobigumi) manga adaptation of Shōgo Imamura‘s Hikuidori historical novel does not appear in the issue and will go on hiatus at least until the magazine’s next issue (shipping on September 10), due to Seguchi’s hospitalization for an unspecified sudden illness. The magazine will provide a later update on Seguchi’s condition and whether the manga will resume in the combined 42nd and 43rd issue (shipping on September 17) or not.

AI localization company Orange Inc.‘s e-bookstore service “emaqi” is releasing the manga in English, and it describes the story:

Once hailed as “The Phoenix,” Edo’s greatest fire slayer, Gengo Matsunaga has fallen from grace. After a fateful incident forced his retirement, he now lives as a penniless ronin with his wife Miyuki. But when an unexpected offer arrives from the DewaShinjo domain—”Return as fire brigade chief and save Edo once more”—Gengo’s fighting spirit reignites. 

With mysterious fires threatening lives throughout the city, he resolves to become a fireslayer once again. Rebuilding the nearly-decimated brigade mockingly called the “Ragtag Hawks,” Gengo stands against the raging infernos to protect Edo and its people!!Will The Phoenix rise from the ashes to save the city he once swore to protect?

Seguchi launched the manga in Weekly Shōnen Champion in April 2025. Akita Shoten published the manga’s sixth compiled book volume on August 6.

Imamura launched the Ushūboro Tobigumi novel series with the Hikuidori story in 2017. Shodensha has published 12 volumes of the novel, and a volume of spinoff short story collection, which released in 2022. The novel won in the sixth Yoshikawa Eiji Bunko Award in 2021.

Oedo Fire Slayer -The Legend of Phoenix-, the television anime adaptation of the novel, debuted on January 11 earlier this year. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan.

Source: Weekly Shōnen Champion issue 40