Nihon Falcom officially announced an anime adaptation of the Trails of Cold Steel series at the Nihon Falcom 40th Anniversary Party stream on March 9. Falcom celebrated its anniversary on the same day, and the company has been existing since 1981. Here's everything revealed on the Trails of Cold Steel anime so far.

Story

The games The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I to IV are part of the larger Trails / Kiseki series, and these four games form the third arc in total. They follow the Liberl games - Trails in The Sky / Sora no Kiseki, and the Crossbell games - Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki. Trails of Cold Steel is followed by Hajimari no Kiseki, released in Japan in 2020, and Kuro no Kiseki, coming in Japan in 2021. The Trails in The Sky games also already received an anime adaptation in the past.

The official press release states how the Trails of Cold Steel games depict the story of Rean Schwarzer and his comrades, set in the giant military nation of the Erebonian Empire. However, Falcom explained that the anime will only use this as base and depict the story of the western part of the Zemuria continent.

Comments from Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo

During the stream, Kondo himself said at first they had no idea how to adapt all the games. Discussing it with the companies involved, instead of directly adapting the series, they decided to focus on stories not shown in the games. Kondo said "events, story, and characters" who were not depicted in the games will be depicted in the Trails of Cold Steel anime. For example, what happened to certain characters or regions while we were following other events through Rean's point of view. Kondo also explained we'll see many Thors Military Academy related characters.

Personally speaking, I'd guess it'll be a one cour - 10 to 13 episodes series - with an original story. Depicting several events which were only hinted at thorough the games. With capitalism and everything, anime series nowadays are sadly rarely over 2 cours - 24 to 26 episodes.

Release date

The Cold Steel anime will be airing sometime in 2022. Which season it'll be airing in wasn't announced yet.

Who is making the Trails of Cold Steel anime?

The Trails of Cold Steel anime project is a joint venture between multiple companies. All these companies should be part of the anime's production committee.

  • First we have UserJoy Technology, who most notably worked with Falcom in the past for gacha game Akatsuki no Kiseki.
  • Then we have Funimation. It's all but confirmed Funimation will have the streaming rights for the Trails of Cold Steel anime in USA.
  • Content fund SYOU, An IP Investment company based in Osaka. It was involved in several anime related Hollywood projects.
  • NADA Holdings, a content business company founded in October 2015.Works on anime adaptations of manga, novels, games. In recent years, participated in several animation production committees.

We'll update this article when additional information is available regarding the animation studio. Alongside the core staff info such as who is the director.

It's interesting to note several Trails Japanese fans on Twitter shared their fear seeing UserJoy's involvement. Many Japanese fans seem to dislike Akatsuki no Kiseki.

Personally speaking, I'd say it's best to simply wait and see. Falcom will publish more information on the anime at a later date.

Nihon Falcom 40th Anniversary Party stream

The anime announcement happened at the 2:13:32 timestamp.

The latest Trails game released in the west is Trails of Cold Steel IV. NIS America did not announced Hajimari no Kiseki and Kuro no Kiseki in the west yet. Moreover, fans are still waiting for Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki to be officially localized.