Adult Swim, Crunchyroll announce first-ever co-production: A Blade Runner anime

Enlarge / A still from Warner Bros.' Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 short, which may be a good hint of what to expect from this upcoming, brand-new anime series in the same universe. (credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

The events of last year's Blade Runner 2049 hinted at more stories to come in the series' universe, and sure enough, a follow-up project has been announced. But Blade Runner: Black Lotus isn't a vehicle for the continued tales of Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford.

Instead, it will take viewers back in time-and back to anime.

Black Lotus, announced on Thursday, will launch as a 13-episode prequel anime series as a first-of-its-kind partnership between two Western anime-distribution titans: Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. No release date has been announced, but work begins with some pretty nimble hands on the deck. Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama will direct all episodes, having done that kind of work with seminal mid-'00s series Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex, respectively.

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