A couple weeks back I posted an article about Warner Home Video and Madhouse (anime studio) collaborating to adapt the very popular CW supernatural series Supernatural into anime. The series will comprise of 22-episodes and has a tentative release date in Japan around January 2011. More news has since come down the pipeline that the 22-episode season will see a DVD release with English-subtitles a couple months later.

From the preview trailer which has come out since it looks like the anime keeps the core theme of the show with the two Winchester Brothers fighting not just through demons, monsters-of-the-week and other supernatural problems, but also their own familial issues. The animation by Madhouse should appeal to non-anime fans since it skews more towards a realistic style instead of the hyper-kinetic wide-eyed animation style many non-fans think all anime looks like. I like to compare the animation to this series to a classic supernatural action anime which came out during the early 1990’s, Ninja Scroll.

The use of deep blacks to shade the character animations and give some definition to their faces gives the whole animation style quite the fleshy, rounded look instead of the angular, almost mechanical style of current anime. The incorporation of typical anime-style monsters was a nice touch. That was definitely tentacles coming out of that monster/demon. Though I must say that I’d be surprised if this series used said tentacles in other ways other than to be an instrument of destruction and bloodletting. I don’t think Supernatural the Animation will have much hentai qualities in it.

Anime horror usually don’t come out as often and when they do they’re usually of the hentai variety. If the folks at Madhouse even do half a good job in adapting the original tv series then this is one anime series I will have on my must-see list.

….And yes, that is a Japanese band cover of Kansas’ classic rock song, “Carry On Wayward Son“, which has become the tv series’ unofficial theme song.