Kenji Kamiyama, the legendary filmmaker behind Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Blade Runner: Black Lotus, and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, has been announced as the person helming the new “multi-media universe” Gundam RG Project, which will officially kick off in 2027 with the release of a new anime titled Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO.
As revealed last night at the 2026 San Diego Comic Con, the “next-generation Gundam initiative” sounds like a sort of soft reset for the Gundam universe, with Bandai Namco describing the RG Project as a “shared universe” that will tie several upcoming Gundam projects together “across anime and video games, and various other media.”
The first entry in the RG Project universe will be Gundam RG XARX-ZERO, a new anime directed by Kenji Kamiyama, animated by Sola Animations, and authored by Toh Enjoe. Funnily enough, Enjoe is the screenwriter behind Science Saru’s The Ghost in the Shell, which happens to be the first Ghost in the Shell anime that Kamiyama hasn’t helped to produce in over two decades.
On the other hand, Sola Animations (also known as Sola Digital Arts in Japan) has collaborated with Kamiyama several times over the past two decades, as it’s the animation team behind Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
While Gundam RG XARX-ZERO will be the first project in the RG Project universe to release, it’s not the first project in the universe to be announced. That honor belongs to Bandai Namco Studios’ upcoming game Gundam Rogue Orbit, a single-player action RPG that was revealed last month on June 5.
However, it’s only retroactively that we know Rogue Orbit is part of this larger project, as Bandai Namco revealed that Gundam RG XARX-ZERO will be “set roughly 100 years before the events of” Gundam Rogue Orbit. Personally, as someone who once watched the many mainline and spinoff Gundam anime in chronological order, I think that starting fresh with a new universe sounds like a good idea, as detangling the current watch order for the Gundam anime is a bit of a headache.
Plus, the caped Gundam in the promo art for Gundam RG XARX-ZERO reminds me of the XM-X1 Crossbone Gundam, which is the coolest Gundam ever produced, so that’s a great start in my books.
