Crunchyroll showed a work-in-progress trailer for its “Ghost of Tsushima Legends” anime at New York Comic Con on Thursday, and it came with bad news. The series has slipped a full year, from 2027 to 2028. The panel also named the first two members of the Japanese voice cast, Mayumi Saco and Shinya Fukumatsu, and added composer Keiji Inai and sound director Yoshikazu Iwanami to the staff. The trailer was shown only to the room and Crunchyroll has not put it on YouTube, so the clearest look anyone outside the panel has is still the teaser from July.
Crunchyroll gave no reason for the delay. The series is produced by Hayate, the joint venture that Aniplex and Crunchyroll set up in March of last year to make anime for the service. PlayStation Productions is a partner and Kamikaze Douga is doing the animation. Neither actor’s role was announced. That matters more than usual here, because one of them already belongs to this franchise. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for the 2020 game “Ghost of Tsushima”.
That matters more than usual here, because one of them already belongs to this franchise.”
Saco voiced Tomoe in the Japanese version of the game. Tomoe is the archer who turns on her own people by teaching the Mongols the bow she learned from an old archery master. Bringing back a voice from the game is a signal that the anime is meant to sit inside the “Ghost of Tsushima” world and not beside it. Crunchyroll has not said whether Saco is playing Tomoe again or someone new. Fukumatsu comes from the anime side, with the Sludge Villain in “My Hero Academia” and Kenji Mitsuura in “Mob Psycho 100” among his roles. He also dubbed Woody Harrelson’s Beckett in the Japanese release of “Solo: A Star Wars Story”.
The source is not the main story of the game but Legends, the free co-op mode Sucker Punch added three months after “Ghost of Tsushima” launched in July 2020. The main game is a grounded revenge story. Jin Sakai (Daisuke Tsuji) is a samurai who survives the Mongol invasion of 1274 and has to fight dirty to save his home. Legends throws most of that history out for tales from Japanese mythology, told by a storyteller and full of otherworldly realms and supernatural enemies. Four players pick from the Samurai, the Hunter, the Ronin and the Assassin. Sony also released the mode as a standalone game in 2021.
The anime has already shown its heroes, with character visuals for three of those four classes released at Anime Expo in July. The Ronin, the Hunter and the Assassin were each drawn in black ink with red calligraphy across the art. A 40-second teaser followed on Crunchyroll’s YouTube channel a week later. It opens on the Kamikaze Douga logo and gray clouds, with red maple leaves drifting through the frame. Text cards read “A storm is coming” and “One unlike any before.” Rust-red woodblock drawings of armor and chains and a sword hilt follow before the staff names appear as huge brush calligraphy. It builds to the three heroes standing together, then a brush-script “Legends” logo.
That tagline is not new, since the last trailer PlayStation released before the game came out in 2020 was titled “A Storm is Coming” as well. The anime is borrowing the game’s own marketing line, and it works as a bridge between the two. The designs make the same point. In the 2020 trailer that announced Legends, the Assassin wears a fox mask, the Ronin wears a wide hat and the Hunter carries a bow. Takashi Okazaki kept every one of those signatures. His Assassin has the fox mask, his Ronin’s hat is wrapped in paper talismans, and his Hunter carries the bow. Fans of the mode will know who these people are on sight.
The fourth class is the problem, because the Samurai has not appeared in any art so far. The official synopsis says the series “follows one of the last remaining samurai as he defends his homeland of Tsushima against the Mongol Empire.” That sentence reads like Jin’s story and not like a mythology anthology. The art and the synopsis do not match yet. Our guess is that the Samurai is being held back as the lead, and that he is the “last remaining samurai” of the synopsis. That is our reading and not an announcement, and a reveal of the fourth hero would settle it.
The team is the strongest thing about this project. Director Takanobu Mizuno made “The Duel” for “Star Wars: Visions” in 2021 at Kamikaze Douga, with Okazaki designing the characters. It was a samurai story set in a galaxy far, far away. The sequel, “The Duel: Payback”, won Okazaki a juried Emmy for individual achievement in animation this year. Okazaki also created “Afro Samurai”. Gen Urobuchi wrote “Fate/Zero” and “Puella Magi Madoka Magica”, and he is in charge of the series composition. Satoshi Maejima co-writes, and the staff also includes calligrapher Gyousyou Suzuki, who did the brush work for “Barakamon”. This crew has already made one samurai story work.
Sony announced the anime at its CES press conference in January 2025. It was the first anime for PlayStation Productions, the arm that turns Sony games into film and TV. “Having already proven the immense quality and versatility of our gaming properties across multiple successful film and television projects, we couldn’t be more excited to announce our first ever anime adaptation,” said Asad Qizilbash, who runs the division. Crunchyroll, Aniplex and PlayStation are all Sony, which makes this a test case for the whole company. Our bet is that if this one works, more PlayStation games will follow it into anime.
The games have kept moving while the anime waits. “Ghost of Tsushima” had sold more than 13 million copies by September 2024. Its sequel, “Ghost of Yotei”, came out in October of last year. It jumps ahead to 1603 and moves north to Ezo, the island now called Hokkaido, to follow a new lead. Atsu (Erika Ishii) is a wandering mercenary hunting a band called the Yotei Six. That game brought Legends back with a free update in March. A Complete Edition went on sale at the start of this month with a new story expansion called “Echoes of Sekigahara”. Legends is now a fixture of the series, and it is the right thing to build a show around.
The live-action film is a different story. Sony announced it in March 2021 with “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski attached. In 2023 he said the script was done and that he wanted an all-Japanese cast speaking Japanese. Then he went off to make “Highlander” with Henry Cavill, which started shooting in Scotland in January for a 2027 release. There has been no word on the Tsushima film this year, and it still has no cast and no date.
That split is the smartest thing about the plan. Stahelski wants to tell Jin’s story, which is history, revenge and the cost of honor. Legends gives the anime the other half of the franchise, the myths and the monsters. The two adaptations do not have to compete for the same plot. The 2028 delay still hurts because it stretches a two-year wait from announcement into a three-year one. But a team with an Emmy and a settled look is worth an extra year. And with no date on the film, the anime is still the version of Tsushima that fans will see first.
What Do You Think? Is the 2028 delay worth it if the anime looks like the July teaser? Should the series bring back Tomoe or keep its heroes new? And would you rather see the Legends mythology or Jin’s own story adapted first?
See you on the next binge!
