Machiko Kyō's Cocoon Wartime Manga Gets Anime in Summer 2025

Akita Shoten announced on Tuesday that Machiko Kyō's Cocoon manga is inspiring an anime that will air on NHK in summer 2025. Hitomi Tateno, a veteran Studio Ghibli animator, is the animation producer, with the studio Sasayuri producing the anime. The announcement did not reveal a format for the anime.

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The manga is set in a tropical southern island, and centers on San and her best friend Mayu, who go to the island's top all-girls school. War soon comes to their country, and the students of the school soon become embroiled in the war effort, and soon enough, the rear-line care of the wounded. One by one, San and Mayu lose their friends in the ever-worsening war.

Kyō released the manga in 2010, 65 years after the end of World War II. The anime's 2025 release comes 80 years after the end of World War II.

Kyō published the Mitsuami no Kami-sama manga in Shueisha's now-defunct Jump X (Jump Kai) magazine in 2013, and Shueisha published the manga's first and only compiled book volume in the same year. The manga won an award in the 18th Annual Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize in March 2014. The manga inspired Production I.G's Pigtails 28-minute short anime film. The short made its international debut in April 2016 at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, where it won the Platinum Remi Award in the Classic Cel Animation Category. Pigtails has won multiple awards, including the Diamond Award in the Animated Film category at the 2016 California Film Awards.

Sources: PR Times, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web