Supernatural The Animation Project Launched From Japan

The official Japanese website of the Warner Brothers production company has opened a section on Thursday to reveal the Supernatural The Animation project, which will launch from Japan in January of 2011. The "special project" will tie into the American live-action television series Supernatural. The website promises that the new project will be an animated work that no one has seen before. It does not indicate whether the project will be Japanese-animated or not.

The live-action series follows the Winchester brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) as they hunt creatures and other supernatural phenomena across the American landscape. The series premiered on The WB network in the United States in 2005, and it will enter its sixth season on The WB's replacement network, The CW, this fall. The fifth season of the live-action series will ship in Japan this fall, along with the Blu-ray versions of the second through fourth seasons.

Warner Brothers has been involved in several Japanese-animated projects based on American entertainment properties, including The Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight, Halo Legends, and most recently, Thundercats. The studio has also acquired the film rights for Akira, Death Note, and Ninja Scroll, and has reportedly been in talks for the rights to the Bleach manga.



Update: The animeanime.jp website reports that the anime will be a 22-episode season that will cover the storyline of the live-action version's first two seasons. The first volume will ship on January 12 with the first two episodes. On February 2, the "Box 1" set will ship with episodes 3 to 12. On April 6, the "Box 2" set will ship with episodes 13 to 22. (There will be a different release schedule for the rental version of the project.)

The anime project will not only remake the best episodes from the live-action version, but also depict original episodes not seen in the live-action version. Those original episodes will include prologues of the Winchester brothers' childhood, anime-only enemies, and episodes featuring secondary characters from the live-action version.

Supernatural creator Eric Kripke is credited as the anime project's creator, and MADHOUSE co-founder Masao Maruyama is serving as executive producer. Naoya Takayama (Night Head, Liar Game) is supervising the series' scripts, and Takahiro Yoshimatsu (Trigun) is designing the characters.

Update 2: Yuya Uchida (Soul Eater's Dr. Franken Stein, Naruto Shippūden's Rinji) will dub the role of Sam, while Hiroki Touchi (Trinity Blood's Abel Nightroad, Bokurano's Kokkpelli) will dub the role of Dean. Both actors dubbed these same roles for the live-action version in Japanese. Sources: AV Watch, Presepe News