Hold onto your Pocky, anime fans. Batman is coming back to the Japanese animation world with an all-new project, descending upon us in 2018. This time, he brings with him a pool of talent that gave us the likes of the animated Afro Samurai as well as the special effects actioner Kamen Rider Fourze. While Batman inches one step closer to his apparent goal of filling every possible screen on every continent at the exact same time, here’s a brief rundown of what we know so far.
This feature-length anime, titled simply Batman Ninja, is the work of director Mizusaki Junpei, whose talents were brought to several MegaMan X video games before landing a producing gig with the popular JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime.
Joining him is Nakashima Kazuki, best known to some of us as a lead writer for the high school superhero explosionfest that is Kamen Rider Fourze, though his credits in the anime world come from mecha series Gurren Lagann and revenge tale Kill la Kill.
Okazaki Takashi is on character designs after holding it down as the writer and artist for Afro Samurai. He also worked on a 9-panel comic story for the Wesley Snipes film Blade: Trinity but let’s not dwell on that.
New York Comic-Con 2017 will be sharing details with a panel presentation to discuss the new project.
Whether we’ll be spreading more anime love to the rest of the DC Comics pantheon in the years ahead remains to be seen, but we certainly hope so. Because, while it’s nice to see more stylistic fusion going on, it’s even nicer when there’s some variety involved.
