Anime action has spent years getting louder, faster and more elaborate. Tetsuaki Watanabe, who directed the first season of Blue Lock, wants to go the other way. For The Vermilion Mask, a supernatural action series coming to Crunchyroll, he chose a style of direction that looks back to the 1990s and early 2000s. His goal is simple: the audience should always be able to follow what is happening on screen.
Watanabe explained the thinking to Polygon by email: “With a lot of today’s flashy action and over-elaborate direction, I often find myself thinking, ‘I cannot tell what is going on.’ So we have deliberately gone with old-fashioned, classic direction to make things easy to follow.”
This is not a rejection of modern tools. The production mixes contemporary animation techniques with the sensibilities of older shows. As Watanabe sees it, a spectacular scene is wasted if viewers can’t read it: “There is no point in a moving scene if the direction is so highbrow that it never reaches the viewer. I want this series watched by as wide an audience as possible, from children to adults, so we are making it with direction that is as easy to follow as we can manage.” He expects the result to feel new to younger viewers and somewhat nostalgic to older ones.
Curses, masks and a lesser-known manga
The story follows Peru d’Arrest, an apprentice mask maker. Under the influence of a cursed mask, the Mask of the Warrior God, he loses control and kills his master and comrades. Consumed by guilt, Peru sets out to destroy the legendary masks his master made, meeting unlikely allies and deadly enemies along the way. Watanabe says the key to giving the cast depth is depicting each character’s convictions properly.
The source manga is written by Dr. Poro and illustrated by Nabana Naba. It has run in Shonengahosha’s Young King OURs since 2021. That low profile was part of the appeal for Watanabe. At the show’s Otakon panel in August 2026, he said the series is “one of those great works not a lot of people know about, and I wanted more people to know it.”
The key details
- Premiere: October 10, 2026, streaming on Crunchyroll as it airs
- Format: two parts (cours)
- Studio: 100studio
- Director: Tetsuaki Watanabe; assistant director Gai Hasako
- Series composition: Daisuke Ohigashi; character design and chief animation direction: Hisashi Higashijima
- Music: Arisa Okehazama
- Opening theme: “Firestarter” by MAN WITH A MISSION; ending theme: “Koe” by yutori
- Cast: Taihi Kimura (Peru d’Arrest), Yuki Yamamoto (Sonarue Maywood), Kazuki Ura (Mok Sharib), Kazuhiko Inoue (Gaston Roux), Akio Otsuka (Mask of the Warrior God), Yui Horie (Master), and others
The first main trailer and cast were revealed at Crunchyroll’s Anime Expo panel on July 3, 2026. A second trailer, a new key visual, the theme songs and six more cast members were announced on September 10, 2026. If Watanabe’s approach works, the most notable thing about The Vermilion Mask could be how easy its fights are to follow.
