Two years ago, we here at J-List let you know that a Shenmue anime was on its way from Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. Now, we have new details concerning the adaptation and release date, and it’s all coming sooner than you think. New details from Crunchyroll revealed that Shenmue the Animation will premiere on February 6th at 12:30 am. But the real surprise is that the series will premiere concurrently on both Crunchyroll and Adult Swim, with Adult Swim premiering the English dub.
The English VA’s include Austin Tindle as Ryo Hazuki, Scott Gibbs as Lan Di, Natalie Rial as Shenhu, Cat Thomas as Nozomi Harazaki, Jeremy Gee as Guizhang Chen, Greg Ayres as Chai, Bryson Baugus as Wong, Luci Christian as Joy, Christine Auten as Xiuying Hong/Lishao Tao, Cody House as Ren, and Joe Daniels as Dou Niu. The full Japanese VA list is currently unreleased, with the exception of Masaya Matsukaze as Ryo’s Japanese voice actor and Takahiro Sakurai as Lan Di’s Japanese voice actor.
Crunchyroll also released a trailer for the series.
While the anime will most likely hold up for folks that don’t want to slog through 2000s era graphics and varied sidequests, the trailer doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the anime’s ability to stand alone. The backgrounds are breathtaking and lush, but the fight animations so far leave a lot to be desired. Though after sitting through Demon Slayer and Castlevania, the meter for judging fight scenes may just be broken.
Staff for the series includes Kensuke Ishikawa (Tower of God) as chief animation director, Kento Shimoyama (The Devil is a Part-Timer!) as scriptwriter, and Udaka as character designer. Chikara Sakurai (One Punch Man, Lost Song) is the series director through Telecom Animation Film, Sola Entertainment is handling production, and Kashitaro Ito will perform the opening theme “Undead-Noid”. Shenmue game series director Yu Suzuki continues on as executive producer.
For those who would rather try out the original game series, Shenmue I & II has been available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC since 2018. The latest entry in the series, Shenmue III has been available for PS4 and PC since its release in 2019.
Source: Anime News Network
