The News Of Tomorrow, Today

Subscribe

Netflix Announced a Bunch of New Anime and I’d Cancel It All for One More Second of This Jet Jaguar

James Whitbrook Avatar
James Whitbrook
Netflix Announced a Bunch of New Anime and I’d Cancel It All for One More Second of This Jet Jaguar

As it is wont to do every few years, Netflix took to Japanese audiences overnight and announced it would continue acquiring and funding a metric butt-ton of new anime projects over the next few years. That’s cool and all but anyway: yo, look at Jet Goddamn Jaguar.

He — mecha star of Godzilla vs. Megalon and king of my heart — is just one of the many iconic Toho giants glimpsed in the new trailer for the recently announced Netflix exclusive Godzilla: Singular Point, directed by Atsushi Takahashi and produced by My Hero Academia’s bones and Beastars’ Orange Co. The series follows two young geniuses, Mei Kamino and Yun Arikawa, as they work together to stop the rising Kaiju threat.

The Kaiju designs come from Ghibli animator Eiji Yamamori and are all delightful, but man, that low-rent, weird-looking Jet Jaguar that looks like an homage to his classic look and like the kind of mecha a society panickily attacked by giant monsters would develop in a rush? Love it.

Godzilla: Singular Point Guest Starring My Boy Jet Jaguar was not the only reveal at Netflix’s Anime Festival 2020, however. As well as updates on previously revealed projects — like the CG Resident Evil series Infinite Darkness, following the adventures of rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and zombie hunter Claire Redfield, separate to the company’s live-action Resident Evil plans, or the Pacific Rim series from Polygon Pictures, Pacific Rim: The Black — there were also first looks for several announced series all set to come sometime within the next year.

New looks included:

  • EDEN (Irie Yasuhiro’s series about a girl raised by robots)
  • Vampire in the Garden (WIT STUDIO’s new original series about a vampire queen and a young woman searching for a paradise where vampires and humans co-exist)
  • Yasuke (Cannon Busters’ LaSean Thomas’ next series, set in a sci-fi/fantastical Feudal Japan revolving around a black Samurai)
  • Trese (a series from BASE surrounding creatures from Philippine folklore)
  • The debut of the 3DCG adaptation of Hiroshi Takashige and Ryōji Minagawa’s beloved manga Spriggan.

There was even a trailer for Transformers: War for Cybertron — Earthrise, the second in Rooster Teeth’s animated trilogy depicting a new take on the robots in disguise’s origin story.

On top of all that, Netflix also had the time to announce five brand-new series at the event. One is actually a sequel: Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure, a continuation of the gorgeous, heartwarming stop-motion series Rilakkuma and Kaoru that followed the adorable San-X mascot and its human friend that sees the fluffy gang and Kaoru hang out at a theme park that’s about to close. The rest, meanwhile, are all manga adaptations.

Time-travel comedy Thermae Romae Novae, based on Yamazaki Mari’s manga, will follow an ancient Roman bath designer named Lucius who is transported to contemporary Japan to learn about the country’s bathing culture. Miura Tsuin and Takahiro Oba’s dystopian horror High-Rise Invasion, meanwhile, is set in a world where victims are transported to a city of skyscrapers and stalked by masked murderers.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure spinoff Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan is a four-episode miniseries will follow the titular manga artist from Diamond is Unbreakable, while Kosuke Oono’s incredible Yakuza comedy Way of the Househusband, about a retired gangster who trades the world of Yakuza for blissful domesticity, is being brought to life by J.C. Staff.

Whew! That’s a lot of anime! Almost too much, especially considering all these are meant to either be coming soon or arriving throughout 2021. Yet, I still can’t stop thinking about Singular Point’s Jet Jaguar more than anything else. What a good robot.