Manga 'Black Torch' Gets TV Anime Adaptation

by Vindstot
Mar 8, 1:58 PM | 30 Comments

A television anime adaptation of Tsuyoshi Takaki's Black Torch manga was announced at the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, Washington on Saturday. Production company Bushiroad simultaneously opened an official website, revealing the main staff, a teaser promo, and a teaser visual (pictured).

Staff
Director: Kei Umabiki (Kono Sekai wa Fukanzen Sugiru)
Series Composition, Script: Gigaemon Ichikawa (Otonari ni Ginga)
Character Design: Gou Suzuki (Sword Art Online: Alicization)
Music: Yutaka Yamada (Vinland Saga)
Studio: 100studio

Takaki serialized the action supernatural manga in Jump SQ. from December 2016 to March 2018 before switching it to Shounen Jump+ the following month and ending it in July 2018. Shueisha published the fifth and final volume in August 2018.

VIZ Media licensed the manga in English in July 2017 and released the fifth volume in August 2019. The manga has also been published in multiple foreign languages, including Spanish, French, and Italian.

Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Jirou Azuma lives a quiet life with his grandfather, utilizing his supernatural ability to speak with animals to befriend and protect them. Both Jirou and his grandfather are descendants of a long-standing shinobi clan, training in combat to keep the art of battle alive within their family. Jirou's life is thrown into upheaval after rescuing a seemingly normal black cat, Ragou, only to discover that the cat is actually a mononoke—a demonic spirit that has long been at war with mankind. When a hostile mononoke comes looking for Ragou, Jirou uses his shinobi training to jump to the cat's defense, but immediately suffers a mortal wound.

Faced with the decision of whether or not to devour Jirou's fading energy and restore himself to full power, Ragou instead chooses to give his remaining energy to Jirou. Reviving the boy, the transfer also grants him great supernatural powers that complement his own shinobi fighting style. This act is witnessed by Ryousuke Shiba, an officer in the Bureau of Espionage whose job revolves around dispatching aggressive mononoke. Shiba extends Jirou and his grandfather an offer: to join the Bureau's new squad, Black Torch, and help them battle powerful mononoke who seek to devour innocent people. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

Teaser PV

Official site: https://blacktorch-anime.com/
Official X: @BlackTorchAnime
Official English X: @BlackTorch_EN

Source: VIZ Media

Black Torch on MAL

20 of 30 Comments Recent Comments

@LuxuriousHeart I wouldn't say that Sign of Affection was a particularly expensive show, but it was still pretty high-quality and interesting. In general, as I said above, the main problem was that you could attract a female audience to male shows, but not a male audience to female shows. So for a long time, you either got BL and female-cosued yuri, whose audience was guaranteed, or shoujo with a fairly gender-neutral audience like Maid Student Council President.

Mar 13, 9:02 AM by RobertBobert

@RobertBobert Because it had a great budget and was a great adaptation. Same with A Sign of Affection.

Mar 13, 8:54 AM by LuxuriousHeart

@EcchiGodMamster

Now that is a skill worth having an enemy! 🤩

Mar 12, 4:25 PM by Retro8bit

@Retro8bit

haha... well for me... i can usually tell who best girl is gonna be from a PV alone lol

Mar 12, 7:40 AM by EcchiGodMamster

@EcchiGodMamster

Truly the endless dilemma whenever a new anime adoption gets announced. 😁

Mar 12, 1:05 AM by Retro8bit

@LuxuriousHeart Let’s start with the fact that the adaptation of this manga is something unique I am no less surprised by it. Secondly, as I said before, it is the long absence of ratings for shoujo manga adaptation that was led to long absence of shoujo anime. Unlike live action adaptations, which have always been hits. The target audience simply did not watch it with rare exceptions. The situation has only changed in the last 5-6 years when Fruits Basket reboot really showed great ratings and became a blockbuster.

Mar 12, 12:58 AM by RobertBobert

@RobertBobert Shoujo is dead, but an axed Shounen manga isn't?

Mar 11, 9:44 PM by LuxuriousHeart

@LuxuriousHeart It’s not as easy as you might think. Firstly, the shoujo market was virtually dead for years because the shoujo audience was ready to watch any live action adaptation of a shoujo manga but not anime. Secondly, for better or worse, the shonen and seinen market has been perceived by the industry as a default market for years, while shoujo and josei are falling into so-called "girls ghetto". This is one of the reasons why there are so many shonen and seinen-labeled anime for girls. You can easily sell male anime for girls, but not female anime for guys. At the time, this was one of the reasons why Argonavis quickly lost the Bang Dream tag.

@Fabris It is probably something like the Japanese Firefly, who managed to conquer a decent fanbase being a failure and canceled.

Mar 11, 3:49 PM by RobertBobert

@Fabris The industry is doing their best to avoid simply adapting more Shoujo and Josei.

Mar 11, 3:42 PM by LuxuriousHeart

@RobertBobert There's even more Shounen and Seinen. Also, there's some great Shoujo manga on backlog, but the studios decide to waste their time with an axed series. 😒

Mar 11, 3:41 PM by LuxuriousHeart

Axed 7 years ago shounen manga, with 20 chapters of content, gets anime. Not complaining, but why? Its there a diehard fan of this, who is rich, and decided to fund it, single handedly? /lol

Now I wonder if Psyren, Mx0, Heart Gear (same uthor, BTW) and other oldies can get the same treatment.

I guess Jump gave up on cashing in new stuff, and now is trying to do with older, forgotten stuff. Wonder if this gets to be a success, can it revive the dead manga? And will it gets a Anime Original Ending, or a open ended one?

Mar 11, 9:30 AM by Fabris

That's crazy, I just read the manga last year.

Hopefully we get an actual ending, I'll be mad if it gets the Rising Impact treatment.

Mar 10, 8:09 PM by malvarez1

cool concept and a good quality, sick trailer?! I'll be giving this a try forsure.

Mar 10, 10:41 AM by ryoko6

Whoa didn't expect this to be adapted, gonna look forward to it.

Mar 10, 7:55 AM by DARM11

@LuxuriousHeart Don’t you get more shoujo and josei adaptations lately? Only in this season we have two shoujo anime, not to mention otome isekai.

Mar 10, 1:30 AM by RobertBobert

So let me get this straight? An axed Shounen series can get an anime adaptation, but they can't even bother adapting more Shoujo and Josei series? The fact that they're adapting an axed Shounen series that flopped, over Firefly Wedding and Don't Call it Mystery is depressing.

Mar 9, 12:13 PM by LuxuriousHeart

@RobertBobert everything except more Shoujo and Josei adaptations apparently

Mar 9, 12:12 PM by LuxuriousHeart

I think they'd try to go original or sort, because I don't think they can work it out with barely 20 chapters they have.

Mar 9, 1:03 AM by Softhenic03

Yes it only had 19 chapters but please check the volume count, cause something like this getting an anime is actually feasible unlike Ayashimon which only had 25 chapters and 3 volumes. Chances are this is going to end the same way the manga did. The only thing we could possibly hope from this is that somehow this gets more people interested in Black Torch hopefully resulting in the resurrection of the manga.

Mar 8, 7:41 PM by Mystic077

Okay, Mx0 animu adaptation when?

Mar 8, 7:40 PM by Geark77

See All Comments