Blade & Soul CN and KR players hungry for more (or a retelling) of its dramatic storyline have an anime based on the game to look forward to later this year, which is being handled by animation studio Gonzo.
Studio Gonzo is known for greatly varying in quality from project to project, with their most recent work being the movie Bayonetta: Bloody Fate.
The promotional images shown on the TBS website (not to be confused with TBS in North America) do not inspire confidence. The change from Hyung-tae Kim’s gorgeous art to the generic and cheap shounen-geared art style is more than a little jarring.
tl;dr it looks like crap.
Blade & Soul was recently teased in Japan and will likely be seeing open beta in the country over the coming months. Hiring Gonzo for a shounen series is probably the best way for NCSoft to promote the game to a broader audience than it would get otherwise.
There is still no news of this game seeing a release in North America or Europe, with NCWest having stayed quiet on the topic since 2012. With NCWest’s primary focus in the West being Wildstar, we may never see an English release unless it makes it to Southeast Asia.
