LONA anime reveals its neuroscience mystery ahead of 2027 debut

LONA (ロナ), the original TV anime from screenwriter Akiko Nogi and WIT STUDIO, has detailed its strange science-fiction premise after a stage appearance at Tokushima's Machi★Asobi event. The series is scheduled to air in spring 2027, with Nogi describing the project as an attempt to explore ideas that would not work as live action.¹²

A mystery written into the dead

The official premise places the story in a broken near-future where humanity is being attacked by people who should already be dead. A specialist organisation called the Laboratory of Optics and Neural Analysis — shortened to LONA — is asked to investigate. Researchers Ao and her apprentice Sango analyse the brains of the dead, searching the memories left behind in neural circuits for the cause of the crisis.²

That setup gives the anime a much sharper identity than a generic “original sci-fi” label. The hook is not simply that the dead are returning; it is that the investigators must work out what people saw, felt and left behind before death. The official site describes the show as a neuroscience adventure, placing forensic investigation and memory at the centre of its supernatural mystery.²

WIT STUDIO leads an original project

Nogi is writing her first original anime screenplay for LONA. She is joined by director Takashi Katagiri, known for SPY×FAMILY CODE: White, while Posuka Demizu — the illustrator associated with The Promised Neverland — is handling the original character designs. WIT STUDIO, the studio behind Attack on Titan and SPY×FAMILY, is overseeing planning and animation production.²

The official trailer presents the series through a striking blue neural-and-cosmic visual, ending on the LONA title and its expanded laboratory name. It is a useful early look at the project's tone rather than a conventional character introduction, and the imagery fits the show's focus on memory, death and the boundaries of scientific analysis.³

The event report adds a little more context around the production. Speaking at the LONA stage, Nogi said her first goal was to make something that could do what live action could not, while the project team reiterated that the anime will follow researchers confronting a world of unexplained incidents.¹

Our opinion

LONA is worth watching because its central question is more interesting than a simple “what if the dead came back?” premise. Making memory the evidence gives the investigation a built-in tension: the researchers may uncover facts, but they are also handling the final impressions of people who cannot explain themselves. Nogi's live-action background and WIT STUDIO's animation pedigree make the project unusually well positioned to turn that idea into a visual mystery. The spring 2027 launch is still a way off, but this is already one of the more distinctive original anime announcements on the horizon.