Dies irae TV Anime's Director, Fall 2017 Premiere Revealed

The official website for developer Light's Dies irae adult visual novel announced on Friday that Susumu Kudo(Mardock Scramble, Ghost in the Shell Arise 4, K) is directing the television anime adaptation with a Fall 2017 premiere slated.

GENCO will produce the series, and the game's original scenario writer Takashi Masada will return to the anime to oversee the scripts.

The game and anime's story features an alternate history of World War II. On May 1, 1945 in Berlin, as the Red Army raises the Soviet flag over the Reichskanzlei, a group of Nazi officers conduct a ritual. For them, the slaughter in the city is nothing but the perfect ritual sacrifice in order to bring back the Order of the 13 Lances, a group of supermen whose coming would bring the world's destruction. Years later, no one knows if this group of officers succeeded, or whether they lived or died. Few know of their existence, and even those who knew began to pass away as the decades passed.

Now in December in the present day in Suwahara City, Ren Fujii spends his days at the hospital. It has been 2 months since the incident that brought him to the hospital: a fight with his friend Shirou Yusa where they almost tried to kill each other. He tries to value what he has left to him, but every night he sees the same dream: A guillotine. Murderers who hunt people, and the black clothed knights who pursue the murderers. He is desperate to return to his normal, everyday life, but even now he hears Shirou's words: "Everyone who remains in this city eventually loses their minds."

The anime will feature the following mostly returning cast:
Kousuke Toriumi as Ren Fujii
Yui Sakakibara as Marie
Hitomi Nabatame as Rea Himuro
Takeshi Maeda as Shirou Yusa
Yoshina Makino as Erii Honjou
Junichi Suwabe as Reinhard Heydrich
Ken Narita as Valeria Trifa
Kishô Taniyama as Wilhelm Ehrenburg
Kei Mizusawa as Kai Sakurai
Kei Mizusawa as Beatrice Waltrud von Kircheisen
Hitomi Nabatame as Isaak
Hiroki Yasumoto as Göetz Von Berlichingen
Yuka Inokuchi as Rusalka Schwägerin
Asami Yaguchi as Eleonore Von Wittenburg
Kouki Harasawa as Spinne
Risato Habuki as Riza Brenner
Yuuki Tamaki as Wolfgang Schreiber
Kousuke Toriumi as Mercurius

Light ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on the UNEEDZONE.jp website from May 9 to July 9 for the anime project, raising 96,560,858 yen (about US$792,000) from 5,188 backers. The original goal of the campaign was 30 million yen (about US$246,000).

Light also announced a new side-story game, a manga adaptation, a novel adaptation, and an original art exhibition at Friday's event in Tokyo. The company will release the Dies irae ~Interview with Kaziklu Bey~ side-story spinoff game in March 2016.

Kazuomi Minatogawa (M3 - Sono Kuroki Hagane/M3 the dark metal manga) is drawing a long-term manga adaptation that will premiere in Kadokawa's Dengeki Maoh magazine in the March 2016 issue on January 27. Light plans to have the manga continue on even after the anime has finished airing. Additionally, Nitroplus Blasterz scenario writer and School-Live! scriptwriter Ryō Morise is writing a novel adaptation that will ship in spring 2016.

The art exhibition will take place in Tokyo from January 9-11 at the Bunka Hōsō Media Plus Hall.

The original Dies irae -Also sprach Zarathustra- adult visual novel shipped for PCs in 2007. The Dies irae Also sprach Zarathustra -die Wiederkunft- game with additional scenarios also shipped for PCs in 2007. The Dies irae ~Acta est Fabula~ and Dies irae ~Acta est Fabula~ -Scharlachrot Grun- games then shipped for PCs in 2009. Additionally, Light shipped the Dies irae ~Amantes amentes~ game on the PlayStation Portable in June 2012 and on PCs in August 2012, and then released a smartphone port for Android devices in August. An iOS version is also planned.​