Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is now an anime, and this new rendition of the FromSoftware game recently played in movie theaters in Japan. For everyone else, the anime won’t be available until January 2027 when it comes to Crunchyroll. It won’t be the movie version, however. The anime’s producer even recently apologized for the apparent confusion.
Though the Sekiro: No Defeat anime has come and gone in its special limited-time early Japanese theatrical release, what’s releasing worldwide will not be that version. At least, not exactly. The 2-hour movie that recently premiered in Japan will be re-edited and extended for the eight-episode TV series on Crunchyroll. Even if each episode is just 24 minutes in length, the length of a standard anime TV episode, that’ll mean roughly an hour of additional story.
Producer Tetsushi Suzuki apologized to fans for the confusion surrounding the different versions of the Sekiro anime adaptation, and for taking so long to reveal an update on the arrival of the TV series.
Perhaps this new TV version will also fix some of the flaws with that movie edit in the process of remaking the anime for the new format. Seeing the movie in Japanese cinemas earlier this month, I found it to be rushed and disjointed, lacking key context while also failing to justify itself to either newcomers or longtime fans.
The additional time a TV series allows for could do wonders for its storytelling issues by filling in the blank spaces that, in the film version, relied on viewers having pre-existing knowledge of the story to understand and follow. It’s already been confirmed that new cuts and sequences, alongside improved animation throughout, will be implemented in the TV broadcast compared to what was shown in Japanese cinemas, seemingly cementing the upcoming release as the definitive version of the anime.
