I expect nothing and I’m still surprised…

This came straight from nowhere for a lot of people and right out of a mausoleum for me. I wrote about BLACK TORCH’s lifespan in October 2023 and I faintly recall doing it out of jealousy over a similar manga that debuted the same year it ended.

Just in case it’s clear as mud, I’m not asking for Chainsaw Man to get buried under a keystone shaped burial mound. It earned its place in animanga and I have come around. I am caught up to the manga after all. At the time, I had already accepted that BLACK TORCH had been laid to rest for good, but then I hear through the grapevine that it’s been greenlit for an anime adaptation.

Channel: vizmedia

On the one hand: what the f[guitar riff]k? But on the other hand: It’s not the first time an anime was greenlit from the cutting room floor. Yoshitoshi Abe was able to get Haibane Renmei onto the silver screen; so why can’t Tsuyoshi Takaki?

Now, having written in disappointed praise about BLACK TORCH in the past and snidely remarked at Chainsaw Man’s expense in the process, does this in any way indicate that I’m happy BT was given an anime adaptation? Yes/no. It’s a spark on the stove that caught my eye, but isn’t worth exploring any further until we get more information. So far, we only have the teaser linked above, the article on Crunchyroll which itself is sparsely detailed, whatever the other outlets have to say about the news and the Wikipedia article which reflects the updates.

To find out a little more at the time of writing, I learned that the studio animating it was established in 2021 as a subidiary of another company called HIKE. 100studio, romanized as One Double O, is gonna spearhead the anime adaptation whenever that will be. Based on the teaser, I say that it’s 10% complete. It’ll come out either in the 4th quarter of this year or the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2026 if luck is on our side. As for the studio itself, while can’t speak for anyone else, I just now learned about this studio who apparently produced the series Quality Assurance in
Another World. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No idea what to make of that, nor even this act of necromancy. But now I have something else to add to my watchlist.