Ghost of Tsushima: Legends anime slips from 2027 to 2028

The headline from Crunchyroll's New York Comic Con showcase was a trailer for Ghost of Tsushima: Legends. The real news was the year on the end of it.

The anime based on Sucker Punch's samurai game is now set for 2028. Several recaps from the Javits Center ran that as a plain release window. It isn't one. It is a delay, and a recent one.

It was a 2027 show three months ago

Sony announced the series at CES in January 2025, with Crunchyroll and Aniplex attached and a 2027 premiere. That date held all the way to July 9, 2026, when Aniplex and Crunchyroll released a "character art" teaser. Gematsu's write-up of it says the series "will premiere on Crunchyroll in 2027".

Three months later, the work-in-progress trailer at NYCC came with 2028. GameSpot's report of the new window doesn't mention a delay. The recaps that do call it one don't say why. The only way to see the slip is to put the July teaser and the October showcase side by side.

And the studio credit got scrambled on the way

Some NYCC recaps credit the animation to HAYATE. HAYATE is the joint production company Aniplex and Crunchyroll set up in March 2025, two months after this anime was announced. It oversees production; it is not the studio drawing the show. The credits released with the July teaser name KAMIKAZE DOUGA as the animation studio, and GameSpot's NYCC report says the same.

That matters for anyone judging what the show will look like. Kamikaze Douga made Batman Ninja and worked on Star Wars: Visions. Director Takanobu Mizuno directed "The Duel", the black-and-white samurai short that opened the first Visions season. A 2028 show from that team is a different prospect from a generic studio credit.

The team has worked together before. Character designer Takashi Okazaki, the creator of Afro Samurai, also designed the characters for Batman Ninja at Kamikaze Douga in 2018. Ghost of Tsushima: Legends puts a stylised samurai designer back with a studio that already turned Gotham into feudal Japan. On paper, that pairing is the most promising thing about the project. It is also the part some NYCC recaps got wrong.

The writing credit is just as heavy. Gen Urobuchi built his reputation on stories that turn on their own heroes, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica to Psycho-Pass. Legends gives him a mode with no fixed protagonist: four players, four classes, and a folklore-haunted version of Tsushima.

What is confirmed

• Source: Legends, the online co-op mode Sucker Punch added to Ghost of Tsushima in October 2020. It swaps the main game's grounded war story for monsters and myth from Japanese folklore.
• Director: Takanobu Mizuno.
• Story: Gen Urobuchi of Psycho-Pass and Puella Magi Madoka Magica handles series composition and scripts, with Satoshi Maejima. Both come from Nitroplus. GameSpot also names Renji Oki on story.
• Character design: Takashi Okazaki.
• Music and sound: composer Keiji Inai, sound director Yoshikazu Iwanami. Gyousyou Suzuki provides the calligraphy.
• New cast: Mayumi Saco, who voiced Tomoe in the game, and Shinya Fukumatsu, the voice of Bomb in One-Punch Man. Neither one's role has been announced.
• Platform: Crunchyroll, which co-produces with Aniplex and PlayStation Productions.

Same showcase, very different schedules

Ghost of Tsushima wasn't the only game adaptation Crunchyroll brought to New York. Sekiro: No Defeat got a world-premiere clip, eight episodes and a January 2027 date. It is being made by KADOKAWA, Qzil.la and ARCH and is billed as fully hand-drawn. The same stage also had Kagurabachi for 2027 and a 2027 slot for the webtoon adaptation The Remarried Empress.

Sekiro has slipped too, just less. It was announced at Gamescom in August 2025 for 2026 and now lands in January 2027. It was revealed seven months after Ghost of Tsushima's anime and will still premiere a year ahead of it.

Ghost of Tsushima has not stood still in the meantime, either. Sucker Punch released the follow-up, Ghost of Yōtei, in October 2025. Its Complete Edition now bundles a Legends multiplayer mode of its own. The anime is adapting a mode the next game already has its own version of.

What nobody has said

• Why it moved. No one at Crunchyroll, Aniplex or Sony has publicly explained the change from 2027 to 2028.
• When in 2028. There is no season or month.
• How long it is. No episode count has been announced. Sekiro has eight.
• Who Saco and Fukumatsu play. Saco's link to the game is Tomoe, but her role in the anime is unconfirmed.

Ghost of Tsushima came out in 2020. Its anime was promised for 2027. It is now due in 2028, eight years after the game, with a trailer still marked work in progress.