Mononoke Movie Announced Years After Series Was Canceled
Remember Monoke? It’s back in movie form! Polygon reports that a film based on the cult classic anime known for its psychedelic watercolor-like visuals will be coming to a theater near you sometime next year. Production company Twin Engine dropped a trailer for the upcoming Mononoke film last Friday.
The Original Series
The original Mononoke is a fantasy horror anime from 2007. The 12-episode series follows a character known only as the Medicine Seller as he travels across feudal Japan, hunting evil spirits—the “Mononoke” in the title.
The avant-garde anime is a spin-off of an earlier 2006 horror anthology series called Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. Monoke is episodic in nature, with all of the Medicine Sellers’ adventures taking place independent of any overarching larger story.
A feature-length Mononoke revival was initially announced at an event held in 2022 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the original series.
Mononoke Movie Setbacks
Originally slated for a 2023 release, the movie ran into some unfortunate delays. For starters, the role of the Medicine Seller had to be recast after Takahiro Sakurai, the character’s original voice actor, was revealed to have been carrying on a decade-long extramarital affair.
The resulting scandal led to Twin Engines recasting the role with Hiroshi Kamiya in order to better reflect, as they put it, “the standpoint of the series.”
Further delays came about when it was revealed last year that Mononoke’s chief animation director and character designer would not be returning for the feature-film version. Yuichi Takahashi, who worked on the popular Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, will take Hashimoto’s place instead.
One big name who is returning from the anime is director Kenji Nakamura, who will again be helming the adventures of the mysterious Medicine Seller. The director previously worked on the anime series The Big O before moving on to the previously mentioned Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. From there, the director followed the Medicine Seller over to his own series, Mononoke, and hasn’t left the mysterious sword-swinging merchant since.
Mononoke is one of the few anime to spawn a manga adaptation instead of vice-versa. Only a handful of anime, including Cowboy Bebop and RWBY, had their birth in animation rather than on a comic book page.
Mononoke was also adapted into a stageplay, something that is, believe it or not, fairly commonplace for anime. Popular anime Fruits Basket and Naruto were both adapted for the stage, while some anime like Ouran High School Host Club and Death Note went the extra mile and became musicals.
That particular practice isn’t exclusive to Japanese cartoons/comics, either. Superman, Peanuts, and most recently, Spider-Man have all been adapted for the stage in North America. French comic Asterix & Obelix was also turned into a European stage production at one point.
When Will Mononoke Release?
As of right now, it’s unknown whether Mononoke will get a U.S. release following its debut in Japanese theaters sometime next year. Given Zoomers and Gen Alpha’s obsession with the anime aesthetic, however, it’s hard to see it not getting at least a limited release stateside.
Until then, anyone looking to dive into the world of Mononoke or perhaps revisit it, the series is currently streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
