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Drifters Anime's 1st Promo Video Previews Animation, Staff

NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan began streaming a promotional video at the Kyoto International Manga Anime Fair event on Saturday for the anime adaptation of Kouta Hirano's Drifters manga. The video notes that the anime is celebrating the 70th anniversary of Shonengahosha, the publisher of the original manga. The video outlines the anime's main staff.

Kenichi Suzuki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders series director) is directing the anime. Hideyuki Kurata (The World God Only Knows, Tokyo Ravens, Maria the Virgin Witch) is handling the series composition and writing the scripts. Yousuke Kuroda (Hellsing Ultimate, Gungrave) is also writing the scripts along with Kurata. Ryoji Nakamori (Hellsing Ultimate) is designing the characters and also serving as chief animation director.

The rest of the staff is as follows:

Setting Research: Seiichi Shirato
Art Director: Ken'ichi Tatefuji
CG Producer: Garyo Tanaka
CG Director: Tomohisa Takae
Color Key: Haruko Nobori
Sound Director: Yota Tsuruoka
Letter Design: Setta
Editing: Kiyoshi Hirose
Production: Drifters Production Committee

The story of the manga centers around Shimazu Toyohisa, the real-life samurai who fought in the pivotal Battle of Sekigahara. In his dying moments, Shimazu is transported to a world of magic with other famous warriors throughout history. These warriors are forced to fight each other in an endless battle.

The manga already inspired a short that was bundled with the 10th and final volume of the Hellsing Ultimate video anime series in 2012. (Hirano created the original Hellsing action manga, just as he did for Drifters.) Ryoji Nakamori (Hellsing Ultimate) supervised the animation in this short with two veterans of Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa, technical director Kazuya Miura and animation director Masayori Komine. Yasushi Ishii composed the music after working on the Hellsing television series and the Darker than Black anime.

Dark Horse publishes both the Drifters manga and the Hellsing manga in North America. Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. once distributed both Hellsing anime, but Funimation Entertainment then picked up the licenses.

Thanks to Rachel S. for the news tip.