The anime adaptation of Japanese game developer Nihon Falcom’s popular RPG series The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has been delayed until 2023. The delay came with some new updates on the series, including an official title, production company, and director.
Titled The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Northern War, the series will be directed by Hidekazu Sato for Tatsunoko Production. The studio announced its involvement in the previously announced project on Twitter this morning and shared that the series will feature an “original story” about a new heroine.
Tatsunoko Pro, a subsidiary of Japanese television network Nippon TV and partly owned by Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell series), was founded in 1962. The studio is best known for its co-production on Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Robotech in the ‘80s and later with Gainax on Neon Genesis Evangelion. Sato (Last Hope, Basquash!) has previously worked on video game spin-off series like Street Fighter II V.
Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel first released in 2013 for the PS3 and PS Vita and saw three sequels over the following five years. The four games comprise one arc in the ongoing “Trails” sub-series of Falcom’s grand The Legend of Heroes series. The series originates in 1989’s Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes but found popularity upon the English localization of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky in 2011, the first of the Trails games.
An epilogue to Trails of Cold Steel, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, released in Japan in 2020 on PS4. It’s scheduled to release in English in 2023 as well.
