CW Network’s very popular tv series Supernatural looks to expand into a new media as Warner Home Video plans to release a 22-episode anime adaptation of the tv series. The series will come out in Japan this January of 2011 with acclaimed anime studio Madhouse doing the animation. The series’ first season will encompass the breadth of the original series’ first two season, but will have room for new content which explore and expand of the two Winchester Brothers’ early childhood as Hunters. Some secondary characters from the original show will also get a much more expanded role within the anime series.

I, for one, was quite excited when I first learned of this development. The original show has been a favorite of mine since it first debuted in the Fall of 2005. While for some the idea of an American TV series getting an anime adaptation might seem farfetched, but I think Supernatural‘s aesthetics lends itself well to the hyper-realistic conventions of anime. Madhouse has already shown it could do straight up horror with its very popular zombie anime series Gakuen Mokushiroku (Highschool of the Dead), so creating a series out of a show based on the supernatural and monsters and demons wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the studio.

The Winchester Brothers in the anime will be voiced by the two same actors who dub the original series for airing in Japan: Yuya Uchida and Hiroki Touchi. There’s no word on whether the series will get an American dub version when the dvd/Blu-Ray comes out in the US so fans hoping to hear Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles voicing their anime counterparts may have to temper their hopes.

Time will tell if this anime adaptation will catch on in the US, but with Supernatural having such a huge and vocal fan-base there’s a chance it may just and allow a second season to be made.