Rebooting popular anime franchises for a modern audience is big these days, with Trigun recently announced to be making a comeback in a similar vein, and today marks the arrival of the heavy metal, bloody anime adventure known as Bastard!! Following the terrifying sorcerer who is hilariously named Dark Schneider, Netflix has released the first episodes of the series onto its streaming service that take fans back to the much more violent days of 1980s anime.
Bastard!! first hit the scene in the late 1980s as a manga from creator Kazushi Hagiwara, with the series being adapted into an anime television series in 1992, telling its story over the course of six episodes. With this newest incarnation of this fantasy epic, twenty-four episodes are expected, with Netflix set to reveal the additional episodes at a later date. Liden Films is the production company responsible for the return of Dark Schneider, having previously worked on some brutal series such as Berserk and Tokyo Revengers to name a few.
Netflix Anime‘s Official Twitter Account shared the news that the first thirteen episodes of Bastard!! can be streamed as we speak, taking viewers to the land of Metallicana where the only chance of survival is by resurrecting one of the most evil sorcerers and hoping for the best:
BASTARD!! -Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy- is now streaming on Netflix!
?Bastard!! ya est? disponible en Netflix! pic.twitter.com/bg3ySuKPGd
If you want to know more about this dark world of sorcery and swords, the official description for Bastard!! reads as such:
“The kingdom of Metallicana is under siege by evil armies of monsters. The desperate defenders turn to a legend that a virgin’s kiss may awaken the wizard “Dark Schneider” from his slumber inside the innocent boy Lucien. Thanks to his sister Yoko, Lucien metamorphoses into the powerful, lecherous wizard. With demons, dragons, and other dark forces roaming the land, and Dark Schneider barely under control, the question remains: will Metallicana ever know a lasting peace?”
The original manga series came to a close in 2010, though the resurgence of the property via this new anime series might spell good things for the future of the world of Metallicana.
Will you be binging through the dark exploits of Dark Schneider this week? What is your favorite dark anime introduced over the decades of the medium? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Bastard!!
