News

Kite, Mezzo's Umetsu Plans His Next Original Project

Yasuomi Umetsu, the creator and director of the Kite and Mezzo anime projects, has revealed in an early Sunday blog entry that he is planning his next original project. Umetsu is attending daily meetings and creating related design materials for the project, but he says that details of the project will come later. The project is actually a restart of plans that were put on hold before.

In the same blog entry, Umetsu mentioned that today was the first time in a long while that he got to sleep nine hours. He has been busy helping with the key animation drawings for the final episode of the Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 anime series. He is helping the Kinema Citrus studio to repay a favor to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 character designer Atsuko Nozaki, who helped out on the key animation drawings for Kite: Liberator. Umetsu is also helping out with the key animation drawings for a project whose characters are being designed by "Kojima-kun." Since the project has yet to be officially announced, he cannot reveal the title and other details of the project. Hirokazu Kojima was one of the key animators for Kite: Liberator.

Umetsu revealed in a May blog entry that he and Saber Marionette J character designer Tsukasa Kotobuki were working on the Japanese/Korean-animated anthology based on Electronic Arts' Dante's Inferno game — before the anthology's staff was officially announced. The Production I.G studio confirmed at Anime Expo in July that it is also involved in the project along with Ergo Proxy director Shukou Murase. The other studios involved include Japan's Manglobe and Korea's Dongwoo Animation. Film Roman, a subsidiary of Manga Entertainment's parent company Starz Media, will tie the release of the animated project with the 2010 launch of the game.

Media Blasters released Kite, Kite: Liberator, and Mezzo Forte in North America, while ADV Films released the Mezzo television anime.