TV Tokyo is making a short anime with the studio behind some of YouTube's busiest anime channels, and Shaman King's creator designed the characters. The broadcaster announced on October 26, 2026 that it is working with Plott on Mecha Samurai, which will stream on YouTube and other platforms, with vertical shorts starting November 2.
Hiroyuki Takei drafted the original main character designs. Takei is best known as the creator of Shaman King, which has been adapted into anime more than once and remains his signature work.
The anime's website opened the same day with a teaser video and the cast list.
The premise
Mecha Samurai is set in present-day Japan. Mechanical ghosts called yōkai, written with the characters for ghost and machine, emerge from a "Demon Gate" in another dimension and start attacking people. A young man named Chiaki Kuzumi fights them as a samurai, using a katana charged with the same power the mechanical ghosts carry. TV Tokyo describes it as unorthodox samurai action.
The cast
- Kentarō Mashiro as Chiaki Kuzumi, chosen by the legendary katana Benitora as its wielder
- Riona Yamashita as Sana Fujimiya, a gamer from the wealthy Fujimiya family who wields the katana Tsukutsuku Denden and can command tsukumogami, the spirits that live in household appliances
- Ayumu Mizukami as Kiyoharu Obana, a mercenary type who will not work for free and carries the gun-shaped katana Murakumo
Masaaki Mizunaka also voices a character. The creative studio TO2KYO2 is handling graphic designs.
How it rolls out
The release plan is staggered, and it is built for social platforms rather than a broadcast schedule. Vertical shorts begin on November 2 across the anime's YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok accounts. The first pre-season episode arrives on YouTube on November 20. The main series follows in spring 2027.
That structure is unusual for a Japanese broadcaster. A conventional TV anime announces a season, a slot and a premiere date, and the streaming version trails the broadcast. Mecha Samurai is doing the opposite: free shorts on social feeds first, a proper episode second, a full series third, all ahead of any television run.
TV Tokyo says this is its first anime production built around streaming and social distribution from the start.
Who Plott is
Plott is a short-anime producer with a large footprint on YouTube. It made the adaptation of Torinosasami's Teikō Penguin manga and Konketsu no Karekore, based on Momota Inoue's Karekore. It launched Rakuraku Hanten on YouTube on September 18, 2026, and the first episode of Tengu Tōsen, a project with Bandai Namco Entertainment, on July 24.
Its earlier Anti-Hero Generations, adapted from Keita Uehara's manga, came out of the company's own New Generation YouTube Manga Award, which it ran in 2021.
The numbers explain why a broadcaster would partner with a YouTube-native studio. Plott reports over 900 million monthly views across its channels, more than 14 million subscribers, and a cumulative view count past 24 billion. It has also said it plans to produce over-the-air television anime next year, starting with three short series.
Why a broadcaster wants this
Short vertical anime is cheap to produce relative to a 24-minute episode and it travels well, because a 60-second clip with subtitles works in every market without a distribution deal. Plott has already proved the audience exists. TV Tokyo brings the thing a YouTube studio cannot easily buy: rights relationships and a pipeline into television.
Takei's involvement is the piece that gives this a chance beyond the short-form audience. He is a name that carries weight with readers who came up on Shaman King in the late 1990s and 2000s, and character designs are the cheapest way to borrow that goodwill.
What is not confirmed
Episode counts, the main series' exact premiere date and the international distribution plan have not been announced. The shorts on TikTok and Instagram will be region-available wherever those platforms operate, but nothing has been said about English subtitles or a simulcast partner.
For now the only date that matters is November 2, when the first vertical shorts appear.
Source: Anime News Network, citing TV Tokyo and the anime’s official website
Featured image: Key visual for Mecha Samurai, via Anime News Network.
