The creator of the legendary Akira anime has a new animation studio with a website that hints at the arrival of a new previously announced film.
Katsuhiro Otomo isn’t a creative mastermind who teases his projects often. An announcement surfaced in 2019 that he’d be writing and directing a film called Orbital Era with the studio Sunrise behind it. It’s 2026 now, and news about the anime has barely surfaced.
That may have changed with the launch of his new animation studio, Oval Gear. The studio’s new website doesn’t directly mention new news about the film, but its website banner features a cosmonaut character from Orbital Era.
When reading its About page, more information about the kinds of projects that it’ll be working on can be found.
“This studio was established with the aim of passing on the visual expression and authorship that Katsuhiro Otomo has cultivated over many years to the next generation, and to disseminate new animation works to the world,” the page reads.
If that doesn’t make it clear that Otomo and Oval Gear are up to something special, there’s the fact that there’s a tab for job openings — suggesting that it’s already hard at work securing talent to bring Orbital Era to life.
The site also directly promises that the studio is working on a new anime and that there’ll be news about it out soon.
Anime fans are eagerly awaiting more information about Otomo’s next feature since it’s been almost thirteen years since his last release — the opening short for the 2013 anime anthology Short Peace.
Otomo’s most famous work is Akira, originally a manga that ran from 1982 to 1990. In 1988, he wrote and directed the now legendary adaptation that has become one of the most influential animated films of all time.
