The Record of a Fallen Vampire is getting a TV anime in 2027. A site opened Monday with a teaser trailer, a teaser visual, the leads, and the staff. The manga is 24 years old. The anime is the first time it has moved.
Yuma Uchida plays Akabara "Red Rose" Strauss, the pure-blooded vampire and last king of the Night Kingdom. Aino Shimada plays Bridget Irving Frostheart, a dhampir who has lived more than a thousand years. Uchida is the louder credit. Shimada is the one standing on the other side of the hunt. Check out the teaser trailer for the anime below:
Mankyu directs at Zero-G and Liber, and is also writing the series scripts. Mankyu's recent run includes both seasons of The Ramparts of Ice, plus Migi & Dali and a Fist of the North Star spinoff. jimao designs the characters, with prop and design work on Mechanical Marie and The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague. Evan Call is composing. That is the Frieren and Violet Evergarden composer on a vampire tragedy, which is a heavier music hire than a 2000s shonen revival usually gets.
Kyo Shirodaira wrote the manga. Yuri Kimura drew it. It launched in Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan in December 2003 and ended with the ninth volume in April 2007. Viz Media published the English books, starting in May 2008 and finishing the ninth in May 2010. Yen Press and Square Enix's Manga UP! Global have it digitally. Shirodaira is the Spiral and In/Spectre writer. This series is one that is an older, finished book that never got a show while those later series did.
The story Viz explained was: is a king who lost the only person he was searching for. Thousands of years ago Akabara lost his kingdom and his queen. Humans could not kill her, so they sealed her and built thousands of fake seals so he would never know which one was real. Dhampires have been chasing him ever since. He is still looking. Then the Black Swan shows up. Every 50 years it takes a young human girl and gives her the power to destroy the king and the queen. Each version is stronger. The question the manga asks is whether the 49th is the one that ends him.
Bridget is the dhampir side of that chase. A thousand years of hunting the same king is a different job from a school-council rival. The teaser has the two of them as the faces. It does not set a month in 2027, a cour count, or a stream. The official account marked the gap in one line: 24 years from the first chapter to a broadcast.
The same week has a second book arriving too. Shirodaira and Kimura are starting a new manga, Vampire Jujikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta (The Record of a Fallen Vampire: A Dog's Song for Dogs), in Shonen Gangan on October 9. The anime announcement and a sequel serial landing four days apart is the franchise coming back in both formats at once. The TV show is the finished nine volumes. The new comic is whatever they want to add after the seal story closed in 2007.
Nine volumes is a short manga for a full anime, which is why a 2027 date with no cour count is the open question. A faithful pass can fit. A split cour would be stretching a book that already ended. Zero-G and Liber sharing the production, with the director also on scripts, reads like a small team holding the adaptation instead of a committee rewrite.
Are you digging out the Viz volumes before the anime arrives, or are you waiting to see who plays the Black Swan? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.