Over the weekend, the worst-kept secret in animation was finally made real: Kagurabachi was getting an anime adaptation. While all fans got to satiate their curious eyes with a morsel of a teaser trailer, the studio behind it, and most importantly, its director, gave it all the confidence points in the world that it’s gonna be something special.
After starting out as the butt of internet memes, over the span of three years, Kagurabachi quickly became one of Shonen Jump’s marquee battle series whose popularity became so immense that fans already got to work fan-casting its gruff protagonist, Chihiro. So naturally, when the anime’s Marvel Studios-esque teaser trailer hit the internet on April 27—and promptly amassed over a million views on YouTube while going viral on social media—the first thing that came to fans’ minds was which leading animation studio would be helming the project.
Predictably, household-name studios like Mappa made the rounds, with the studio’s bonafides speaking for themselves. But lo and behold, the studio in charge of the anime is Cypic—the rebranded animation wing of CygamesPictures—the studio that brought us The Summer Hikaru Died and the similarly viral horse-girl racing game anime, Umamusume.
Translation: despite the trailer being quicker than a hiccup, clocking in at 45 seconds, this show is going to look downright gorgeous.
But beyond how gorgeous the brief glimpse the teaser had in store for fans, with blinks of its action, lay a detail that all but assured it actually had the makings of living up to the hype. That detail being its director, Tetsuya Takeuchi.
Who the hell is Takeuchi, you ask? Well, take a glimpse at his resume, which includes work as a key animator on shows like Bleach, Delicious in Dungeon, Devilman Crybaby, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, Gunbuster 2: Diebuster, Hunter x Hunter, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, and The End of Evangelion (just to name a few pupil-dilation-worthy shows).
Even with such an impressive roster of shows to his name, there’s one more that carries huge weight here. Takeuchi was also briefly a key animator on the adaptation of a little-known “Big Three” shonen called Naruto—just seven episodes, to be exact. But among the Naruto episodes Takuchi served as a key animator for was its 48th episode: i.e., the famous Rock Lee vs. Gaara fight.
If you know ball, you’ll know that every tier list of the best fights in anime history inevitably serves Rock Lee vs. Gaara—that includes plenty of newer battles like Jujutsu Kaisen‘s equally grand Maki fight. And how couldn’t they? The battle is what shonen dreams are made of: a powerless member of an ensemble of superpowered ninjas battling a dude who’s yet to be touched throughout the entirety of the series’ tournament arc, only for the untouchable to be humbled by the powerless in turn (although “powerless” quickly becomes a misnomer, for anyone who’s well aware of that iconic shot of Rock Lee dropping his training weights).
It’s peak pro wrestling. And it’s peak shonen anime. Everyone who tuned into the fight back on Toonami, myself included, has this fight permanently etched into their minds as the rubric for measuring any anime fight that came after it. It’s just that good.
And fans aren’t the only ones geeked about Takeuchi directing Kagurabachi. Series creator—and all-around tapped-in mangaka in all things cool in pop culture and video games—Takeru Hokazono released a statement in a Shonen Jump press release, highlighting how honored he was to have his series directed by Takeuchi for that very reason.
“You know, the Rock Lee vs Gaara fight in Naruto? The manga version is great, of course, but isn’t the anime version incredibly cool? Well, the very person who brought that scene to life is our director,” Hokazono wrote.
“Who would’ve thought that I’d be directing a popular Shonen Jump anime after working as a key animator on Naruto back when I was a newbie… you really never know what life has in store,” Takeuchi added in his own statement.
“When you think of Kagurabachi, you think of katana! And more katana! Plus cool characters and intense drama,” Takeuchi continued. “I’ll work hard to capture all those elements and aim to make a show that both long-time fans of the manga and first-time viewers alike can enjoy.”
Seeing as how the manga is already responsible for the coolest depiction of speed in the medium to date, that’ll no doubt be a tall task for Takeuchi and Cypic to live up to fans’ lofty expectations for the show. But as far as we’re concerned, they’ve got all the assurance in the world to go beyond platitudes and be a truly generational anime when Kagurabachi releases next April.
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