This Week in Japan: Kishimoto Draws Again
Second week in a row the news came out of New York Comic Con, and this time the loud one was Naruto: three announcements in one stage show, one of them with a date. Nintendo put a price on the Ocarina of Time rebuild. Trigger's Edgerunners sequel is four days out. Dr. Stone is not done after all. One-Punch Man has a January. And Kagurabachi, from last week, got its calendar filled in. No inventory links this week, nothing connected. The desk section has a reply in it for the first time since September.
Naruto, three ways, at NYCC
On October 10, on a stage called "NARUTO: What's Next?", with Junko Takeuchi and Noriaki Sugiyama in the room, they answered the question three times. One: a new manga called NARUTO: SHADOW RISING, drawn by Masashi Kishimoto himself. Story, characters, magazine, and date all withheld until Jump Festa in December. Two: the four-episode Naruto x NINKU crossover anime is alive. It was scheduled for TV Tokyo in September 2023, pulled just before air "to improve quality," and then nothing for three years; it is an original story where a young Naruto gets lost in the world of Ninku, Koji Kiriyama's 1993 Jump manga that Pierrot animated for 55 episodes in 1995. No new date. Three: a NARUTO CARD GAME from Bandai Card Games, worldwide June 2027, three starter decks (Naruto, Sasuke, Gaara), a first booster called Enter: Naruto Uzumaki, demo events from February, a million demo decks in the spring, and a teaser with new Pierrot animation.
Read the three together. The manga has the creator and no date. The anime has a date it already missed and no new one. The card game has a date, a product list, a demo calendar, and a trailer. Which of the three is the one the company is sure about? Which one did the animators get assigned to? Kishimoto drawing Naruto again is real news, and it is also the thing on that stage with the least paper behind it. Cool. Ask again in December.
Ocarina of Time, rebuilt, $70, November 5
The Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time got its overview trailer on October 14 and pre-orders opened. November 5, Switch 2 only, "built from the ground up" per Nintendo, with a quest log called Threads of Time, support for the Zelda Notes phone service, two new amiibo that unlock masks, and a first print run with textured foil cover art. The 1998 N64 original plus the 2011 3DS remake have sold over 14 million. It was announced at the Zelda 40th anniversary Direct on September 8; the trailer and the pre-order are the new parts.
This series spotlighted an N64 cartridge three weeks ago, and a rebuild like this is the best thing that can happen to that shelf. Every remake sends people back to check what the original looked like. Some of them stay. The N64 version is the one with the 1998 in it, and no amount of foil changes which one that is. Real.
Edgerunners 2, October 20, Trigger
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 put out a new poster and trailer on October 14, six days before it drops on Netflix on October 20. Ten episodes, Studio Trigger again, Kai Ikarashi directing (he did episode six of the first one, "Girl on Fire"), Ichigo Kanno on character design, Masahiko Otsuka on screenplay, Bartosz Sztybor back as showrunner. A standalone story: a street kid becomes an edgerunner in Night City. The four leads are Weak Kingsley, a veteran once called King; D, a Snake Nation netrunner out for revenge; Roman Carax, a cinephile who films other people's lives; and Talia Yang, out of the corpo towers.
The first one was ten episodes in September 2022 and it is the reason a lot of people under thirty know the word Trigger. The sequel has the same showrunner and promoted the director of the best episode. That is the right way to do a second season and it is also the way that gets judged hardest. Four days. Then we know.
Dr. Stone is not over
The Dr. Stone TV anime ended June 25 after 95 episodes, 94 plus a special, and the manga ended March 7, 2022, at 232 chapters. Except volume 27 of the manga had a sequel story in it called TERRAFORMING, and on October 10 at STONE FES. 2026 they announced Dr. STONE TERRAFORMING, a sequel anime "officially in production," with a trailer that has new Senku lines in it. No studio named, no date. Riichiro Inagaki's comment was that the science adventure "was still continuing." The manga ended four years ago and the anime finished four months ago, and the gap between finishing and being finished is the thing they put a trailer on. Cool.
One-Punch Man, cour two, January 2027
Season 3's second half got a visual and trailer on October 13 and a month: January 2027. J.C. Staff is still the studio. JAM Project does the opening again, a song called "Never Done." The Garo arc continues. One line is all this needs: the second half of a season is the half that gets the schedule it should have had the first time. We will see.
Kagurabachi, the rest of the calendar
Last week the date was April 2027. This week the road to it. World Tour Part 3 screens the first twenty minutes of episode one in Singapore (AFA, November 29), Seoul (December 6), and Sao Paulo (CCXP, December). The finale is March 25, 2027, at Kabukiza Theatre in Tokyo, where the anime was first announced, with episodes one and two shown in full and live viewings in theaters across Japan. Then TV in April. A kabuki theater for a sword manga. Somebody at Shochiku knows exactly what they own. Real.
On the desk
Anthony, this week, in his words: "The only thing I can think of is Delicious in Dungeon. They announced the new season coming in fall of 2027. So that freaking sucks. Kind of like, oh cool, it's coming out soon. I'm like, oh, we gotta wait a year again. But the show's so good and the animation is definitely quality, and it's something I even go back just to rewatch casually. So I'm gonna remain patient and hope they deliver again like they did last time."
The record: Season 2 was announced at Anime Expo on July 4, October 2027, Netflix only, Trigger again, Yoshihiro Miyajima directing again, Kimiko Ueno writing again, Yasunori Mitsuda scoring again. He caught it late and the math still holds. A year is a year. Same studio as the Edgerunners item above, same month that one ships, and the one he is waiting on is the one that is a year out. That is how it goes.