Netflix’s foray into the world of anime has been slow and steady over the years, but the company is about to make a major commitment to bringing a frankly absurd amount of new series to its service—ranging from revivals of Japanese classics to brand new shows.
Announced at an event in Tokyo this morning, Netflix outlined a slate of 13 movies and series it plans to bring to its services in Japan and across the world over the next few years, including revivals of Go Nagai’s legendary anime/manga series Devilman and Masami Kurumada’s Saint Seiya, and the previously announced Western debut of Godzilla: Monster Planet. Here’s the complete list:
Cannon Busters
Written by Bee and Puppycat’s Natasha Allegri, Anne Toole, Nilah Magruder, and creator LeSean Thomas, Cannon Busters—which originally started off as a comic series, and then a Kickstarter-funded animated project—follows the exploits of a high-end socializing robot called S.A.M who is forced to team up with a criminal and a lowly maintenance droid to find S.A.M’s companion, the missing princess of a besieged Kingdom.
Devilman: Crybaby
One of the most amazingly-titled series of the lot, this new adaptation of Go Nagai’s iconic manga series Devilman reimagines the earliest days of Akira Fudo’s career as the Devilman, a hybrid demon and human tasked with protecting the world from an impending demonic invasion.
B: The Beginning
Originally announced as Perfect Bones last year, Production I.G.’s newest series is set in a futuristic city-state beset by an infamous serial killer, and the quest to hunt them down by members of the nation’s royal police force.
Sword Gai: The Animation
An adaptation of the fantasy manga series of the same name, Sword Gai follows a orphan named Gai, whose right arm is replaced with a reforged demonic sword the young man fuses with to fight his enemies. An animated adaptation was announced back in 2014, but now it’s finally emerging on Netflix.
A.I.C.O. Incarnation
This new scifi series from Bones—probably best known for its current work on fantastical action series My Hero Academia—follows a young girl who lost her parents in a mysterious incident known only as “The Burst” that wiped out a massive research city, as she seeks answers from within the Burst’s remnants to a secret hidden within herself.
Lost Song
A 12-part fantasy series about two women—a young village girl and a songstress—who discover they have the power to cast magic through song, leading them on a quest to save their Kingdom from the brink of war.
Rilakkuma
The adorable little cartoon bear who’s spent the past 15 years being plastered over cute merchandise in Japan gets his first anime, a stop-motion series that imagines the bear as the sentient stuffed animal of an overworked office drone named Kaoru.
Knights of the Zodiac: SAINT SEIYA
An adaptation of the “Galaxy War” and “Silver Saint” arcs of Masami Kurumada’s famous sci-fantasy manga, about a team of guardian knights empowered by the constellations to defend the reincarnated Greek Goddess Athena from her fellow Olympian gods.
Baki
Another manga adaptation, this time of Keisuke Itagaki’s Baki the Grappler, a martial arts series that follows a young man following in the footsteps of his father to train and become the strongest fighter in the world... which you apparently do by fighting the most dangerous criminals on death row?
Kakegurui
A series about ridiculously high-stakes gambling set in a cutthroat Japanese Academy dedicated to the art of playing and betting on parlor games... yes really.
Fate/Apocrypha
The Fate/Stay light novel series continues in an adaptation of the spinoff book Fate/Apocrypha, revolving around the breakout of a war between two factions of powerful mages.
Children of the Whales
An adaptation of Abi Umeda’s surrealist fantasy manga about the magic-imbued inhabitants of a secretive island civilisation that roams a sea of sand, and their contact with the outside world for the first time.
Godzilla: Monster Planet
The first animated Godzilla movie to come out of Japan is making its Western debut on Netflix this year—and it’s a weird one. Set 20,000 years after Godzilla ravaged the Earth and forced humanity to flee into the stars, the descendants of humankind band together to launch an all out offensive to reclaim their homeworld back from the King of Kaiju.
With all the above series expected to hit Netflix worldwide over the next year or so, suffice to say anime fans are in for a hell of a treat. Let us know what you plan to watch in the comments!