On Sunday, Kyoto Animation announced that it’s working on an animated TV series based on Masaoki Shino’s RuridDragon manga. The studio revealed the news in a “thank you” video on its website. The announcement was timed to coincide with the manga’s titular character Ruri’s birthday on December 28. The video’s description caption states: “Sounds like they’re making an anime. The broadcast is still a long way off.”
The manga was first published by Viz Media and MANGA Plus in English in 2022. The off-beat story is described as a slice-of-life manga about a high school girl, Ruri Aoki, who discovers she’s a human-dragon hybrid after waking up with horns, leading to funny situations as she navigates school life, friendships, and her new draconic abilities such as breathing fire and discharging electricity.
Originally a one-shot, the comic was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump and later moved to the Shōnen Jump+ digital platform. Known for its gentle, character-focused storytelling and exploration of adolescence, the series uses Ruri’s dragon features as a metaphor for adolescent changes, focusing on friendship, self-acceptance, and finding one’s unique place in the world.
Studio Kyoto was founded in 1981 by husband and wife Hideaki and Yoko Hatta, who remain its president and vice-president respectively. Among the studio’s best known anime films and series are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), Clannad (2007), Free! (2013), Sound! Euphoniium (2015), A Silent Voice (2016), Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid (2017) and Violet Evergarden (2018).
Sources: Anime News Network: Kyoto Animation
©Masaoki Shindō, Shueisha
