Murciélago has a teaser trailer, a new visual and its three lead voices. The adaptation of Yoshimurakana’s manga also locked in a January 2027 premiere, and HIDIVE will stream it exclusively in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The cast:
- Hitomi Ueda as Kuroko Koumori, the series’ central killer
- Minori Suzuki as Hinako Tozakura, her partner and driver
- Sumire Uesaka as Chiyo Yanaoka
Murciélago follows Kuroko, a former death-row inmate who was pulled out of execution through what the show calls extraordinary legal measures and turned into a state-sanctioned killer. Hinako, her watchdog, drives better than anyone and stays close enough to keep her on a leash. Crimes land on their desk, and the two of them go to work on the people behind them.
HIDIVE’s own description calls it a buddy action series with an “addictively insane” streak, which is about as polite as a summary of this manga can get.
Staff and studios
Matsuo Asami directs at Satelight and Staple Entertainment. Asami’s credits include directing The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom and episode direction on SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table.
Takashi Naoya is chief director and also handles series composition. Naoya directed Am I Actually the Strongest? Kiyoshi Tateishi designs the characters, and Masanori Akita and Yūichi Tsuchiya compose the music.
Two studios sharing the work is worth noting. Satelight has decades of action and effects work behind it, and splitting a violent series across two houses usually means the schedule is tight. How the workload is divided will not be clear until the broadcast.
A manga that has been running since 2013
Yoshimurakana launched Murciélago in Square Enix’s Young Gangan in 2013, and it is still going. The 29th collected volume shipped on July 24. Yen Press publishes it in English and released volume 27 on September 22.
The series has 2.3 million copies in circulation worldwide. There is a spin-off as well: Murciélago Byproduct Araña ran in Square Enix’s Manga UP! app from January 2018 to June 2020 and centred on Reiko Kuchiba.
That history matters for anyone worried about pacing. A manga with 29 volumes and no ending in sight gives an anime plenty of material, but it also makes a full adaptation unlikely. Long-running series usually pick an arc, land it, and leave the door open.
What to expect
The manga is violent, sexually explicit and deliberately provocative, and it has never pretended otherwise. An anime airing on Japanese television will have to negotiate that. Expect the broadcast version to pull back on material that cannot air, which is a real question for anyone who read the source.
January 2027 is a crowded season and Murciélago lands in it with a built-in audience that has waited a long time. Thirteen years without an adaptation is unusual for a series with these sales numbers. Whatever held it up, that obstacle is gone now.
The teaser and visual are on the anime’s official channels. If you want another look at how a long-running action manga gets handled when its artist needs a break, we covered the Chained Soldier hiatus earlier this year.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: New visual for the Murciélago anime, via Anime Corner.
