Wildly popular video game ‘Genshin Impact’ will be transformed into an anime show

16 Sep Wildly popular video game ‘Genshin Impact’ will be transformed into an anime show

Genshin Impact, the wildly popular free-to-play mobile game released in September 2020, which has since ascended to cultural-touchstone status with over 60 million players in August and a consumer revenue chest of $3 billion to date, is now growing its empire with a new venture that looks to multiply its phenomenal success: an anime TV show.

The first trailer for the show debuted on Friday, illustrating the game’s magical forest, prairie fields of flowers, and the long-lost twins at the center of its adventure in vivid, immersive detail. Sweeping shots reveal the mythical universe of Teyvat as a serene landscape of crumbling castles and ancient runes, which players of the game will know belies a fierce underworld of dragons, knights, and dueling gods.

The show is a collaboration between the game’s Shanghai-based developer miHoYo, and the Tokyo-based animation studio Ufotable, which is also the creator behind the smash hit anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. The Genshin Impact anime is still in the early phases—the title card for the teaser, at the moment, is simply “Long-Term Project Launch: Concept Trailer.”

It comes just as the game nears its two-year mark. It has already gathered a basket of accolades: This past spring, data.ai reported that Genshin Impact ranked No. 1 for global consumer spend in the first quarter of 2022, topping $530 million. And last fall, App Annie reported that as of July 2021, Genshin Impact had surpassed Pokemon Go as the No. 1 game by lifetime consumer spend. Its developer miHoYo is set to release a new version of the game (3.1) later this month.

That Genshin Impact took off in the thick of the pandemic is perhaps no surprise: A world in lockdown seemed primed to dive into an escapist fantasy with stunning graphics and a whimsical backstory, where monsters can be vanquished once and for all, and players, known as “travelers,” chase the one true goal of the game: to find their way back to a long-lost sibling after 500 years apart.

Genshin Impact won’t be the first game to be adapted into a TV show—in fact, it follows a growing trend. In November 2021, Netflix premiered Arcane, a series based on the video game League of Legends, which won a host of trophies at the latest Emmy Awards. And earlier this week, Netflix dropped Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on the recent video game Cyberpunk 2077.

Source: Fast Company