The Record of a Fallen Vampire anime arrives in 2027
Kyo Shirodaira and Yuri Kimura's 2003 vampire manga is being adapted for television for the first time, with Zero-G and Lieber animating it for a 2027 broadcast.
The Record of a Fallen Vampire is finally getting an anime. Twenty-three years after Kyo Shirodaira and Yuri Kimura's manga began in Square Enix's Monthly Shōnen Gangan, the series is being adapted for television, with a 2027 broadcast planned and both its studio and its lead cast now confirmed.
What the announcement reveals
The adaptation was announced on the series' new website on 5 October 2026 alongside a teaser visual and a teaser trailer. Animation is being handled by Zero-G together with Lieber, with Mankyuu credited as director and series composer, jimao as character designer and Evan Call writing the music. Yūma Uchida voices the vampire king Rose Red Strauss and Aino Shimada plays Bridget Irving Frostheart, and the site carries comment from both.
A thousand-year grudge, told slowly
The original manga follows Rose Red Strauss, the last king of a Night Kingdom destroyed a millennium ago, who has spent the centuries since breaking seals across the world in an attempt to free his wife Adelheid. That quest puts him at odds with the Black Swan, an order of vampire killers, and with the rest of his own kind. Shirodaira and Kimura serialised the story from 2003 to 2007 and Square Enix collected it in nine volumes; it has stayed in print in English long after the final chapter, which is a large part of why a television version has been anticipated rather than merely rumoured.
The manga is starting again first
The anime arrives into a series that is already being revived on the page. A follow-up manga, Vampire Jūjikai: Inu ni wa Inu no Uta, is scheduled to begin in Shōnen Gangan on 9 October 2026 with Shirodaira returning as creator, so the animation lands on top of a franchise in the middle of restarting rather than one being reopened after two decades of silence. No episode count, broadcast slot or overseas streaming home has been announced, and the 2027 window is a Japanese one until a licensor says otherwise.
Our opinion
There is a specific pleasure in a completed manga getting an anime two decades late, and it is not nostalgia. The Record of a Fallen Vampire has an ending, which means whoever writes the series has a target to build towards rather than a monthly chapter to chase. That should make the adaptation feel like a closed arc instead of a pilot holding its breath, and it is the sort of confidence a period revenge story needs to earn its slow burn. The one risk is the opposite of the usual problem: with only nine volumes and a sequel just launching, the temptation will be to pad the run to keep the franchise warm. The best outcome here is the boring one — adapt all of it, stop, and let the new manga stand on its own.