Hideo Kojima has never knowingly under-expanded a universe. Death Stranding began as a game about hauling parcels across a haunted America, and has since swollen to take in a sequel, an A24 live-action film and an anime feature called Mosquito. Now comes Death Stranding Isolations, an original hand-drawn series for Disney+ in 2027, and today it finally has a teaser to go with its release window.
The footage arrived at Kojima Productions’ tenth anniversary event in Tokyo, along with a poster and the sort of tagline that stops you mid-scroll: “My mom became a crater.” You won’t find that on the back of many cereal boxes. The story is set in North America shortly after Sam has stitched the continent back together through the Chiral Network, and follows a girl who has chosen solitude over human company, until a few chance encounters drag her into a world she’d rather not join. It’s a fresh tale with its own cast, running alongside the games rather than retelling them.
The staff list is more interesting than most anime-adaptation line-ups. Takayuki Sano directs, with Tow Ubukata, whose credits include Mardock Scramble and scripts for Ghost in the Shell Arise and Psycho-Pass 2, handling series composition and the screenplay. Animation comes from E&H production, the studio behind Ninja Kamui, Bullet/Bullet and the Magic Knight Rayearth TV series, and Ilya Kuvshinov, who designed the characters for Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, does the same here. Kojima himself is executive producer, so the surreal touches should be safe.
Traditional 2D is a bold choice in a streaming age that mostly prefers its apocalypses rendered in expensive CGI, and a gamble worth cheering. It also pushes Disney+ into the video-game adaptation business, a field Netflix has been mining for years with Castlevania and Arcane. There is a pleasing irony in a franchise about reconnecting a shattered humanity producing a story about someone who’d rather stay in and be left alone. Which, in fairness, is how most of us watch Disney+.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we’ll be watching with interest, and from a safe distance from any crater.
Watch the teaser on YouTube: Death Stranding Isolations – Teaser Trailer
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