No one was surprised when a Shenmue anime was announced because everything is getting an anime. But there's reason to be especially excited about a Shenmue adaptation: the series has always been character- and narrative-driven, and considering what a cliffhanger Shenmue 3 ended on (despite an 18-year wait) there's a lot of people eager for more. The third and most important reason is that Shenmue is awesome. That should be enough.
That's the trailer above, and sadly there's not a forklift in sight. The footage suggests the anime is leaning into the harder-edged side of the Shenmue universe, ie, the parts where people beat the shit out of each other. That makes better TV than turtle races and goose catching, I guess.
The production is a joint Crunchyroll / Adult Swim effort, with Shenmue executive producer Yu Suzuki involved as an executive producer. One Punch Man director Chikara Sakurai is directing. The 13-episode series is expected to launch next year.
I binge watched the first season last month. It was pretty good. They changed the script slightly, but definitely better than watching the Shenmue “movie” from back in the day.
Chaos wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 11:37 pm
Spoiler tag it I guess, but how far into the games does the anime go so far?
It goes from the beginning of Shenmue 1 to the end of 2. Feels like they changed and shortened the portions of Shenmue 1 the most. I guess to make it flow better. But the majority of everything in the games is there, other than the side games.
It was pretty good. They changed the script slightly, but definitely better than watching the Shenmue “movie” from back in the day. 