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Dark Machine Mecha Game/Anime Project Debuts Anime Pilot Trailer

The staff for the original game and anime project Dark Machine premiered the pilot trailer for Dark Machine the Animation at the project's Comic-Con International panel in San Diego on Saturday.

Kazumi Terada directed the pilot trailer at Production +h. The overall project credits Code Geass director Goro Taniguchi as the creative producer, and Macross artist Hidetaka Tenjin as the chief mechanical designer. Keiichi Yano is the project's creator, and the anime will be available for TV and streaming via Fuji TV.

The video above also lists writing credits from "Team Carbuncle" featuring Takaaki Suzuki, Tatsuhiko Urahata, and Atsuo Ishino.

The anime will have its own unique world setting, which will include Dark Machine being a popular gaming metaverse, and will take place "in the not too distant future." The anime is planned for global distribution.

The Dark Machine "asynchronous big team arena shooter" game was announced on February 9. It is slated for release next year, with Early Access starting this year.

The game's staff describe the story:

The year is 2079.

Humankind is living in an energy bubble after Dr. Robert Palmer discovered the Palmer crystal to give humankind all of the energy it would ever need and more. Unfortunately, not all of humankind has benefited from this hyper energy source and underground battles for this energy have developed at a global scale. The factory robots that have been helping to cultivate this energy of the future have been transformed to fighting mechs by these undergrounds and they are fighting for huge stakes.

However, dark energy is said to reside in small quantities in the Palmer crystal. The use of hyper AI technologies was used in an attempt to harness this dark energy and use it for battle advantages. It is currently unclear whether this dark energy can be controlled by mechs…

Taniguchi is the creative producer on the game, and Tenjin is the chief mechanical designer. Yuya Saito is the game director and Koji Hakuta is the producer. The game is a 7-versus-7 mech third-person shooting game.

The staff have raised more than US$8.7 million from more than 6,000 investors including Tencent, web3 game platform Immutable, and blockchain company Sui. The staff are developing the game with Unreal Engine 5. The game will feature the blockchain-based in-game currency MACHINA ($MXNA), and will also feature NFT asset ownership and an NFT marketplace for direct sales and peer-to-peer exchanges. Players will still be able to install and play the game without having to purchase any NFTs, and will also get free NFTs to start playing the game. Decentralized tournaments will be integral to the gameplay.

Tenjin is an illustrator and mechanical artist whose works include Macross Zero, Aquarion, Noein - to your other self, Hellsing Ultimate, and Macross Frontier. He also drafted mechanical art for the Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato franchises.

Taniguchi has also directed such anime as Planetes, Maria the Virgin Witch, Active Raid, One Piece Film Red, s-CRY-ed, revisions, ID-0, Infinite Ryvius, and Estab-Life: Revengers' Road, among others.

Source: Dark Machine panel at Comic-Con International