Quruli and Hitsujibungaku score Inherit the Winds

The original Bakumatsu anime Inherit the Winds has filled in its music, its guest cast and its route to the screen. The official site posted six updates on 19 September, including the trailer for the theatrical advance version, both theme songs, an extra cast member and a two-week cinema run starting 13 November.

The music is the headline. Quruli's Shigeru Kishida is composing the score – his first for a television anime, and by the production's own count more than 50 cues – while Quruli and Hitsujibungaku have recorded together for the first time. Their joint song “Kaze wo Tsugumono” is the television opening theme, and “Namida no Kawa”, also sung by Hitsujibungaku's Moeka Shiozuka, is both the advance screening's theme and the television ending. It gets a digital release on 12 October, a month before the cinema run.

Who else is in it

Takaya Kamikawa joins for a friendly guest appearance as Umeda Shinbei, the first named addition since the main cast was confirmed. The leads are Daisuke Sakuma of Snow Man as Tachikawa Jinsuke, Yūki Kaji as Okita Sōji, Aoi Yūki as Koganei Hyōgo, Kōki Uchiyama as Hijikata Toshizō, Yūichi Nakamura as Kondō Isami and Yasuyuki Kase as Serizawa Kamo, among others.

Behind the camera, Yutaka Narui – the playwright who founded the theatre company Caramel Box – wrote the original story with Aniplex and is writing the scripts, with Azuki Mashiba credited on the original concept. Tomohiro Kawamura directs at Live2D Creative Studio and Drive, Fumi Ebina designs the characters, and the production is built on a deliberately hybrid look that blends Live2D with cel animation.

When and where you can see it

A two-week advance screening opens in Japanese cinemas on 13 November, focused on Jinsuke and his arrival among the Mibu Rōshi-tai; stage greetings are set for 13 and 14 November. The television series then debuts in January 2027 on the “Agaru Anime” block carried by CBC, TBS and 26 affiliated networks.

Everything announced so far is Japan-domestic: there is no international cinema or streaming plan, and January 2027 is the only television window given, so it is not a date. One trap worth naming, because the stage play and the anime share almost the same title: Narui's Caramel Box play was “Kaze wo Tsugumono” written with the final character in kanji, while the anime uses hiragana and is billed as an original work.

Our opinion

The interesting thing here is not the Shinsengumi, who have been anime regulars for decades, but the technical bet. A period drama animated in a Live2D and cel hybrid, directed by the man who made Gamba look the way it did, is a genuinely unusual way to spend a television budget in 2027, and the advance screening is the studio testing whether that look holds up on a cinema screen before committing it to a broadcast slot. Pairing a stage playwright's first anime scripts with a rock frontman's first anime score is either a very good idea or a very expensive one. Either way, the two-week run in November is the honest place to find out.