Get ready for some explosive action and neon-colored aesthetics! Ubisoft’s Blood Dragon standalone expansion impressed back in 2013 for how it cleverly parodied action films, video games, and cartoons of the ’80s and ’90s. Now a new anime based on the beloved gaming experience called Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix is in the works, and it has some big talent. Adi Shankar, who was the showrunner of the Castlevania anime, is the creator, and Paris animation studio Bobbypills, best known for Peepoodo, is handling the visuals. The anime was unveiled during Netflix’s Geeked Week live stream.
Shankar gave us a lot to digest while explaining his vision for Captain Laserhawk, saying it’s inspired by a few different things, from Nintendo’s Saturday morning Captain N: The Game Master cartoon to DC comics imprint Elseworlds, which focused on stories that took place outside of the DC canon. Shankar also referenced his one-shot fan films called Bootleg Universe, where he did creative and dramatic reinterpretations of the biggest entertainment properties, as what brought him together with Ubisoft to create this project.
Captain Laserhawk takes place in a parallel universe in the 1950s, where automation became widespread and created massive ripple effects, destroying the economy with unemployment at a high. A big tech company called Eden comes out and gives everyone basic universal income, and, as as a result, starts to exert social control. Cybernetically enhanced super-soldier Dolph Laserhawk is the protagonist, who escaped from the Eden army, and is set on pulling off his last big heist before he puts this life behind him and escapes into the sunset with his boyfriend.
“The animation on this show is going to be awesome,” Shankar said during the live stream. “We really wanted to bring you guys something different, something that is unique and a confluence of various animation styles, like a love letter to everything we grew up with as ’90s kids.”
A teaser trailer was shown, which included a mix of the retro style we’ve come to expect from the series alongside more modern anime sensibilities. It also showed a racing sequence that looked straight out of a video game. We will add the trailer as soon as it becomes available on Netflix’s channels.
Ubisoft also took this time to announce it has another Far Cry anime in the works separate from Shankar’s project, but it did not give any details except showing a Far Cry logo. This means we don’t have any idea if it follows a specific game or locale from the video games. Guess, we’ll have to stay tuned to find out more.
That’s not the only new video game adaptation coming to Netflix. The company also revealed a new Castlevania series starring Richter Belmont is in the works as well.