The official X account for the Yona of the Dawn anime announced on Tuesday that Pierrot Films will animate the series' planned sequel. Pierrot Films is the animation brand Studio Pierrot set up in 2024, and its credits so far include Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War and Mr. Osomatsu season 4.
That makes the sequel a Pierrot production in more than name. The original 2014 anime was made at Studio Pierrot, so the follow-up stays inside the same building rather than being handed to an outside team.
What the sequel is adapting
Yona of the Dawn comes from Mizuho Kusanagi's manga, which began in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume in 2009 and ran for well over a decade. Kusanagi ended the serialization on December 19, and a four-chapter "gaiden" spinoff finished in Hana to Yume on July 3. The 48th and final compiled volume shipped on Tuesday. Viz Media, which licensed the series in English, released volume 46 on July 3.
The first anime covered the opening stretch of that story and stopped well short of the ending. Twenty-four episodes aired in 2014, followed by three original anime DVDs in 2015 and 2016. Funimation handled the home video release in English. That leaves more than a decade of unadapted manga, and now a finished ending for the sequel to aim at.
The story
Viz's description of volume one sets the premise: Princess Yona lives an ideal life as the only princess of her kingdom, doted on by her father and protected by her guard Hak, until everything changes on her 16th birthday. She witnesses the murder of someone she loves, flees the palace with Hak, and spends the rest of the story trying to survive and eventually take back her throne.
Kusanagi's other work includes Mugen Spiral, Game X Rush and NG Life. Yona is by far her longest series and the one that built her international readership.
The franchise outside the anime
Yona of the Dawn has kept moving through other formats while the anime sat dormant. The manga's first stage play ran in March 2016, a second ran in Tokyo in November 2018, a third followed in November 2019, and a musical stage play opened in Tokyo in July 2024.
That is a lot of continued activity for a series whose anime has been off the air since 2015. Stage adaptations usually follow demand, and a franchise that gets four of them in eight years has demand.
Why the studio choice matters
Pierrot Films exists as a separate label from the main Studio Pierrot, and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is the clearest example of what it does: long-running franchise material, handled with enough consistency that viewers stop noticing the seams between cours. Yona needs something similar. The 2014 series had a distinct look, and a sequel arriving eleven years later has to either match it or justify departing from it.
There is no premiere date yet, no staff list and no cast confirmation. The announcement covers the studio and nothing else, which is normal for the first concrete update on a project that has been described as planned without a timeline attached.
For now the confirmed facts are narrow: Pierrot Films is animating it, the manga is complete at 48 volumes, and the sequel will have a finished story to adapt. Everything else is still open.
Source: Yona of the Dawn anime’s official X account, via Anime News Network
Featured image: Cover of Yona of the Dawn volume 48, via Anime News Network.
