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Supernatural Goes Anime

Supernatural
© Warner Bros.

Via Anime News Network, Cinema Today and AnimeAnime.JP are reporting that a new Supernatural series is set to debut in 2011 - in Japan and animated. The live action series just closed out its fifth season and has been renewed for a sixth, not without some controversy, but apparently the property has been doing pretty well in Japanese eyes and Warner Bros. is looking to expand the franchise in a new way. Warner Bros. has done a few works with Japanese animators in the last few years with a collection of Matrix storylines in the Animatrix as well as the Batman anime anthology that was done. Warner Bros. also has several live action films that they're looking at going forward with based on anime and manga properties and they handled the release of an Appleseed 3DCG anime film as well.

According to the reports, the show will be done as a twenty-two episode series and will see a home video release in Japan on 01/12/2011 with the first volume containing the first two episodes. A month later, the first box set will ship with episodes 3-12 and then in April, the last half of the set will be released. The show will be available on both DVD and Blu-ray.

This release will apparently cover the storyline from the first two seasons of the live action series while also having some new original stories mixed in that will include material of the Winchester brothers' younger days and more such as  anime-only enemies and stories focusing on the supporting cast from the live-action version. This is a weird mix of prequel and current (at least to season one) storytelling that would probably only work as anime. There were lots of fantastic side characters in the series that deserve some more screen time but it’s surprising that the producers have decided to focus on season one. Later in the series the brothers found themselves working from a bar full of demon hunters ran by a mother/daughter team. This set up seems custom made for anime. The Crowley character from the most recent two seasons with his invisible hellhound would also make for intriguing anime storytelling. The idea of telling a prequel story from the youth of the brothers is intriguing but adding in stories from secondary characters from the brother’s adulthood seems a little scattershot. With that said Supernatural is a purposefully melodramatic series that could easily make the leap to another medium not often known for dramatic subtly. The possibility of demons and monsters from the Supernatural universe, and new ones too, created with virtually no budgetary limits due to the medium is extremely exciting. If there is a true fan behind this series there’ll be at least one episode that follows the exploits of a young Bobby and John Winchester killing monsters buddy cop style!

Supernatural's creator Eric Kripke is being listed as the project creator here while Madhouse is serving as an executive producer as well. The series is being co-directed by the team of Shigeyuki Miya and Atsuoko Ishizuka, both of whom have some good credits behind them and recently worked on the Aoi Bungaku series of standalone tales.