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Bandai Entertainment Gets Kurokami Anime (Updated)

Bandai Entertainment has announced at its Black Sunday event in Los Angeles that it has acquired Kurokami The Animation, the upcoming adaptation of Lim Dall Young and Park Sung Woo's Kurokami (Black God) supernatural action manga. The television anime series will debut simultaneously in Japan, South Korea, and the United States within 24 hours of each other on January 8, 2009. In the United States, it will premiere on the iaTV television network on Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT (or about eight hours after the Japanese airings). The announcements about the simultaneous broadcasts are being made in Japan and South Korea after Bandai Entertainment's announcement in Los Angeles.

The American producers have been dubbing off pencil test footage instead of final animation due to the speed of the process. Laura Bailey, Jason Griffith, Julie Ann Taylor, Stephanie Sheh, and Christopher Kromer will play the lead roles of Kuro, Keita, Akane, Excel, and Daichi, respectively. Mike Sinterniklaas (Freedom) is directing the dubbing, and Toshifumi Yoshida (Gurren Lagann) is producing the dubbing. The staff chose to work with Screen Actors Guild members to gain access to certain, otherwise unavailable talents.

The story revolves around an ordinary high school boy (game programmer in the manga) named Keita who gets caught in a battle being fought by Kuro. Kuro is a Tera Guardian — a Mototsumitama or a guardian who maintains the Coexistence Equilibrium. Kuro saves Keita's life and regenerates a part of his body that Keita loses. (The anime has its own story direction with differences from the manga verison.) The Sunrise anime studio and director Tsuneo Kobayashi (Emma: A Victorian Romance, Glass no Kamen, The Twelve Kingdoms) are animating the production in Japan. The original manga has been running in Square Enix's Monthly Young Gangan magazine, and Yen Press published the fourth volume of the manga under the name Black God in North America in October.

Image © Lim Dall Young, Park Sung Woo/Square Enix/Sunrise, Bandai Visual

Update: More information from the Bandai Entertainment staff added.