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CG Starship Troopers: Invasion Film's Powered Suit Previewed

The official blog for the new computer-animated Starship Troopers: Invasion film posted designs for the title's power suits on Monday. While the first Starship Troopers film did not feature the suits, Starship Troopers: Invasion will have power suits designed by Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) and Shinji Usui (Metal Wolf Chaos, Chromehounds). The two created designs for three different kinds of suits to appear in the title.

The new film draws design cues from Paul Verhoeven's loose 1997 live-action film adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's original novel. Shinji Aramaki is directing the new film, which is due out in summer 2012. A 77-second trailer for the film was posted online last month, and previews of the anime's ships were revealed last December.

Flint Dille is writing the screenplay for the film after working as a story editor on The Transformers and G.I. Joe television series of the 1980s. The staff commissioned illustrator Hidetaka Tenjin (Macross Frontier, Macross Zero, Hellsing Ultimate) to create a teaser poster for the film. Joseph Chou (Appleseed films, Halo Legends, proposed live-action Evangelion) is producing the new project. Edward Neumeier and Casper Van Dien of the live-action Starship Troopers film are executive producers.

Before Verhoeven's live-action film and its several direct-to-video follow-ups, Gundam anime studio Sunrise produced a video version of Starship Troopers in 1988. Studio Nue (Macross, Legend of the Galactic Heroes) co-founder Naoyuki Katō had created powered suit designs for his illustrations in the 1977 Japanese reprint of Heinlein's novel.