‘Sekiro’ Anime Adaptation Brings A Fresh Aesthetic To FromSoftware’s Hit Franchise

While the “video game curse” feels like a thing of the past, there are still significant hurdles directors must overcome when adapting a video game — namely, questions like: What sets this apart from the game? What does the audience gain in the exchange of interactivity for more passive viewership?

In the first trailer for the upcoming anime adaptation Sekiro: No Defeat, it looks like artistic idiosyncrasy is the answer. Director Kenichi Kutsuna (The Fire Hunter, Magical Destroyers) promises, “We are pouring every ounce of our artistic vision and passion for beauty into its production,” while distributors Crunchyroll emphasize the show is “fully hand-drawn” by a “dream team of acclaimed anime creators.”

The teaser for the series, revealed at GamesCom 2025’s Opening Night Live, showed flashes of familiar scenery in snippets of animation produced by studio ARCH. As Wolf, the player character of the game, faces off against principal antagonist Genichiro in a scene mirroring the opening levels, what immediately stands out (other than the slightly boxy aspect ratio) is how much the characters’ colors pop — brighter and more saturated, even as the first clip embraces colder lighting. That color (courtesy of designer Azusa Sasaki) is just one element that differs from the video game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and developed by FromSoftware, but it makes a world of difference, even while channeling its spirit.

While Sekiro is less sparse and faster-paced than Miyazaki’s other games, it still bears hallmarks of FromSoftware’s favored narrative approach: sparse dialogue, with story left for players to discover in an almost archaeological way, pieced together through the descriptions of various items. It remains to be seen how No Defeat will interpret this, especially as so much of the satisfaction lies in the rhythmic patterns of combat. The pace of the trailer is appropriately frenetic; however, it quickly glances at gorgeous landscapes, moody, rugged close-ups on the character designs of Takahiro Kishida, and flashes of a very expressive visual approach to the action.

That fits well with the story of Sekiro, a foreboding journey through a picturesque province disrupted by imperialist violence. While it’s unclear what the overall shape of the show will be, it seems this conflict is embodied in the show’s very art style — something that seems especially promising given the talent involved.

Series director Kutsuna has long been a standout name among “web-gen” animators and is considered a pioneer of the digital 2D style associated with this group of artists, one that still stands out amid contemporary anime. The “dream team” claim is hardly hyperbolic; for Sekiro, Kutsuna is pairing with artists like Yuji Kaneko, art director on the excellent Heavenly Delusion.

Some moderately successful video game anime adaptations have worked by ditching the original story entirely to express what that world means to them (see: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners). Others have leaned on the simpler power of the edit — using the absence of a player as an opportunity to really toy with perspective (NieR: Automata). Since Sekiro: No Defeat is sticking to the story of the game, the most exciting question is how far this group of artists can go with their visual reinterpretation.