The strategy of Netflix to stand out from its competitors for a few years is to bet more and more on anime licenses, and also on original content from Japanese animation.
It remains to be seen how the merger of Funimation and Crunchyroll ends up affecting them, but for now Netflix continues to grow its anime catalog and during the Japanese Anime the streaming service took the opportunity to confirm that Some 40 anime series and movies will hit the platform.
More original anime and new seasons
Already in 2020, Netflix closed a deal with six anime creators to produce new series and movies, from content for the whole family to animation for adults, and it seems that it has been bearing fruit and during 2022 we will see many premieres.
Anime Japan left us with several announcements about what is coming to the platform, with one of the highlights being the confirmation that ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’ will return in the fall with new chapters of ‘Stone Ocean’. Some small glimpses of the first part of ‘The Seven Deadly Sins: Grudge of Edinburgh‘, which will be released during the year, and the final trailer for season 2 of ‘Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045’, which premieres this May.
“Anime is one of the pillars of our investments in Japan, and is watched by almost 90% of our members in the country in the last year. And at the same time, interest in anime has grown around the world, and more than half of our members worldwide have joined in the past year,” said Kohei Obara, director and creative for anime at Netflix.
“In addition to diversifying our catalog and bringing back some of the fan favorites, we want to continue to support our subscribers’ love of anime and new discoveries, both in Japan and around the world, with this new chapter of anime on Netflix”.
Some of the most anticipated series that will be released in the coming months are ‘Tiger & Bunny 2’ on April 8, the second season of ‘Ultraman’ on April 14,’Vampire in the Garden‘ on May 16 and ‘Spriggan‘ on June 18. The second seasons ‘Record of Ragnarok’ and ‘Blood of Zeus’ are also confirmed, but not much information about them or a tentative release date have yet been revealed.
The premiere in 2022 of ‘Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas’, an animated spin-off of ‘Army of the Dead’ that will feature the voices of Dave Bautista and Ella Purnell. To take off with this new anime season, this week it has already been released on the platform ‘Thermae Romae Novae‘, a new anime based on the work of Mari Yamazaki.
As for original films, it also arrives on April 28 ‘bubble’ by Tetsurou Araki and ‘Drift Home’ by Studio Colores, although release dates have not yet been confirmed.