Crunchyroll dropped the trailer for its upcoming “Sekiro” anime adaptation Monday ahead of the show’s panel at the SXSW Festival in Austin.
Based on FromSoftware’s critically acclaimed 2019 action-adventure game “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,” which follows shinobi warrior Wolf on his quest to rescue his lord during Japan’s Sengoku period, the TV series is a hand-drawn anime from director Kenichi Kutsuna and Studio Qzil.la. In the new “Sekiro: No Defeat” trailer, which readers can watch via the video above, the anime version of Wolf begins this journey.
The “Sekiro: No Defeat” director told Variety during an exclusive interview that the goal with this project was to “take as many elements from the underlying work of the game as possible,” and “it doesn’t deviate too far from what the fans would expect” — but that using “every single element would be impossible and very difficult.”
“With the game, of course, you’re playing in the character, or the player’s, POV, so you have one point of view and that wouldn’t really work for an anime, so we tried to adapt it as much as possible as an audio-visual type of medium,” Kutsuna said. “There’s a lot of respect paid to the original game, but there were some liberties taken in the sense of point of view and joining the imagery together, as opposed to being placed into the world in the first person.”
Since the “Sekiro” anime was first announced out of Gamescom last year, interest has been high — but so have fans’ concerns for how the video game will translate to a TV series format. Kutsuna says he is aware of this feedback and takes it very seriously.
“FromSoftware, they make such high quality game experiences, and they’ve established this community and fandom worldwide,” Kutsuna said. “So we understand that the potential audience for what we’re making in this anime is going to put this under the microscope, and it’s going to be a very, very– I don’t wanna say harsh or strict lens, but you could say the audience will be looking at it. So I of course, am nervous if we are able to answer that level of resolution that they perhaps might be looking for. But I think we’ve done everything we could from the production side in terms of maintaining a level of quality that wouldn’t tarnish the FromSoftware and ‘Sekiro’ brand. And I think when we dropped the teaser, there was this weird response that, ‘Hey, are they using AI or not?’ And that kind of turned into a little thing, but that has all been dissipated and quelled. I think there’s a lot of unexpected elements that you really can’t plan for when developing a project of this nature, but I think I still remain confident that we’ve done what we could to do justice to the franchise.”
Kutsuna says one aspect of the IP he wanted to make sure to emulate was the possibility for Wolf (through the player) to choose from multiple different paths — some with much better outcomes than others.
“One of the core pillars of the video game experience, I think, is that it’s not a very kind game, shall we say, to the players,” Kutsuna said. “And I think it also allows a lot of interpretation on the players part in terms of how they want to proceed through the game. And those who have played will know that type of experience. So, in taking that and transforming it into an audio-visual adaptation, we wanted it to be open to interpretation in a similar way that the game presented itself to its players.”
Kutsuna is set to discuss the making of “Sekiro: No Defeat” during Monday’s SXSW Festival panel, which will also include an in-room-only screening of the first episode, alongside series composer Shuta Hasunuma.
“When you take a game medium and translate it for an audio-visual medium, I think the role of music and sound design changes quite a bit. And when I was scoring, I kept that in the back of my head,” Hasunuma told Variety. “A lot of it comes down to really getting that period piece, that era feel, correct with the music, and that can also translate to the character’s emotion. I think the role of music in an audio-visual setting is you have a lot more resolution in terms of how you guide the audience and the viewer through that experience. There’s a lot more nuance that can be expressed in a linear format than in an interactive format. So there’s a lot of very intense moments, a lot of very private, more nuanced, dramatic moments. There’s a very wide range you’re trying to make sure was properly expressed in the music.”
Kutsuna says the “Sekiro” anime’s screenplay and storyboarding process was done “very closely” between him and game developer FromSoftware. “In the game, there are three major branches, of which we’ve kind of leaned towards one of those storylines in the anime,” Kutsuna said, noting that FromSoftware “would check and approve everything and make sure it is in line with the world setting that’s been established.”
During the project, which marks the first time FromSoftware has had any of its IP developed into another on-screen medium, Kutsuna said: “When it came time to make certain decisions and interpreting the best way to express it in anime, they took a lot of our advice and kind of leaned towards us, but we’d also look to them in terms of anything in the essence of the game that we might be missing.”
Watch the new “Sekiro: No Defeat” trailer via the video above.
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