Blade & Bastard Anime Set as HIDIVE Exclusive for 2027

What was announced

HIDIVE will be the exclusive streaming home for Blade & Bastard, the upcoming dark fantasy anime, when it debuts in 2027. The service, operated by AMC Global Media, confirmed the pickup on June 30, 2026 and released a new English-subtitled teaser trailer alongside the announcement. According to HIDIVE, the series will join its 2027 simulcast slate and stream exclusively on the platform.

"We're thrilled to reveal that the upcoming new anime BLADE & BASTARD will stream exclusively on HIDIVE as part of our 2027 simulcast slate," said John Ledford, President of HIDIVE, in the announcement. He called it an "eagerly-awaited dark fantasy" that "offers an exciting mix of action and adventure."

Where and when you can watch

HIDIVE says Blade & Bastard will premiere at some point in 2027, and an exact date has not been announced beyond that window. The exclusive will be available to subscribers in the United States and Canada, as well as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

The staff and cast

The teaser confirmed the core creative team. Tomoki Kobayashi is directing the series, with Naruhisa Arakawa handling series composition and Rina Iwamoto on character design. Jun Suemi is credited with monster design cooperation, Kisuke Koizumi is directing the sound, and Hayato Matsuo is composing the music. Studio xingfu is producing the animation.

The voice cast is led by Makoto Furukawa as Iarumas and Tomori Kusunoki as Garbage. They are joined by Daiki Yamashita as Raraja, Saori Hayami as Ainikki, and Shion Wakayama as Berkanan.

What the story is about

Blade & Bastard follows Iarumas, a man whose corpse is discovered deep in an unexplored stretch of dungeon. Once resurrected, he has lost every memory of his life before death, and he spends his days delving back into the dungeon to collect a finder's fee for recovering the bodies of dead adventurers. His skill earns him grudging respect, but his cold, utilitarian manner keeps the living at a distance, leaving him to keep company mostly with the dead. The teaser frames that grim premise with the line, "Dead. Resurrected. Forgotten."

Background

The anime adapts Kumo Kagyu's light novel series, illustrated by so-bin, which is set in the world of the Wizardry video game franchise, one of the foundational titles of the role-playing game genre. The novels launched in December 2022 under Drecom Media's DRE Novel label and now run to six volumes. In English, the light novels are published in print by Yen Press and digitally by J-Novel Club.