Nihon Falcom officially announced an anime adaptation of theTrails of Cold Steelseries at the Nihon Falcom 40th Anniversary Party stream on March 9. Falcom celebrated its anniversary on the same day, and the company has been existing since 1981. Here’s everything revealed on theTrails of Cold Steelanime so far.
The gamesThe Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel ItoIVare part of the largerTrails / Kisekiseries, and these four games form the third arc in total. They follow the Liberl games -Trails in The Sky / Sora no Kiseki, and the Crossbell games -Zero no KisekiandAo no Kiseki.Trails of Cold Steelis followed byHajimari no Kiseki, released in Japan in 2020, andKuro no Kiseki,coming in Japan in 2021. TheTrails in The Skygames also already received an anime adaptation in the past.
The official press release states how theTrails of Cold Steelgames depict the story of Rean Schwarzer and his comrades, set in the giant military nation of the Erebonian Empire. However, Falcom explained that the anime will only use this as base and depict the story of the western part of the Zemuria continent.
Comments from Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo
During the stream, Kondo himself said at first they had no idea how to adapt all the games. Discussing it with the companies involved, instead of directly adapting the series, they decided to focus on stories not shown in the games.Kondo said “events, story, and characters” who were not depicted in the games will be depicted in theTrails of Cold Steelanime. For example, what happened to certain characters or regions while we were following other events through Rean’s point of view. Kondo also explained we’ll see many Thors Military Academy related characters.
Personally speaking, I’d guess it’ll be a one cour - 10 to 13 episodes series - with an original story. Depicting several events which were only hinted at thorough the games. With capitalism and everything, anime series nowadays are sadly rarely over 2 cours - 24 to 26 episodes.
Release date
TheCold Steelanime will be airing sometime in 2022. Which season it’ll be airing in wasn’t announced yet.
Who is making theTrails of Cold Steelanime?
TheTrails of Cold Steelanime project is a joint venture between multiple companies. All these companies should be part of the anime’sproduction committee.
We’ll update this article when additional information is available regarding the animation studio. Alongside the core staff info such as who is the director.
It’s interesting to note severalTrailsJapanese fans on Twitter shared their fear seeing UserJoy’s involvement. Many Japanese fans seem to dislikeAkatsuki no Kiseki.
Personally speaking, I’d say it’s best to simply wait and see. Falcom will publish more information on the anime at a later date.
Nihon Falcom 40th Anniversary Party stream
The anime announcement happened at the 2:13:32 timestamp.
The latestTrailsgame released in the west isTrails of Cold Steel IV. NIS America did not announcedHajimari no KisekiandKuro no Kisekiin the west yet. Moreover, fans are still waiting forZero no KisekiandAo no Kisekito be officially localized.
