Four shorter items from ANN’s September 8–9, 2026 coverage — two live-action manga adaptations, an anime film, and a Fate game — with context on each.
Live-action Blue Lock film opens in Singapore on September 24
Singapore cinema chain Golden Village and distributor Purple Plan will open the live-action film of Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura’s Blue Lock in Singapore on September 24. The film opened in Japan on August 7, debuting at #8 with about 277.6 million yen (roughly US$1.74 million) in its first three days — a modest start for a franchise this large, and well below the anime Blue Lock: Episode Nagi film, which earned about 463 million yen in its opening weekend in April 2024 and ranked #2.
Yusuke Taki directed the live-action film, Tetsuo Kamata wrote the screenplay, and CREDEUS — the studio behind the live-action Golden Kamuy film — produced, with TOHO distributing. The soccer manga runs in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine, passed 40 volumes in 2026, won Best Shonen Manga at the 2021 Kodansha Manga Awards, and is published in English by Kodansha USA. The anime, from studio 8bit, has aired two seasons (2022 and 2024) and has a third — adapting the “New Hero Wars” arc — on the way. Southeast Asia has been a consistently strong market for the franchise, which is why regional dates like this are announced separately and promoted heavily.
Live-action Anata o Korosu Tabi BL series gets a 2nd season
Fuji TV is producing a second season of the live-action series based on Sai Asai‘s yakuza boys-love manga Anata o Korosu Tabi (A Journey to Kill You), premiering on the Fuji TV On Demand (FOD) platform on October 8. Masanari Wada and Hiroto Takahashi return as Kinji Kataoka and Ren Odajima, with Daisuke Kamijo again directing and Natsuko Takahashi returning to write, now joined by Jun Narita. The story follows a yakuza lieutenant and the subordinate ordered to take care of him while the heat dies down — and, secretly, to kill him if it comes to that. Akita Shoten published the manga and re-released it in two volumes in 2025; the first live-action season premiered on FOD in September 2025.
The renewal is a data point in a larger trend: Japanese broadcasters and streaming platforms have been steadily expanding live-action BL drama output, much of it debuting on streaming services like FOD, Lemino and TELASA rather than in prime-time slots, where the format has proven to travel well internationally.
We Are Aliens film streams a ‘theme song trailer’
Studio NOTHING NEW began streaming a “theme song trailer” for We Are Aliens (Ware Ware wa Uchujin), featuring the song “Sasakure” (“Split”) by singer adieu, directed by the film’s own director Kohei Kadowaki — known for Beastars season 2’s ending sequence and YOASOBI music videos. The film, about two childhood friends, Tsubasa and Gyotaro, forced years later to confront what drove them apart, opens in Japan on September 25.
We Are Aliens has had an unusually strong festival run for an independent anime feature: it screened at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May 2026 and in competition at Annecy in June, with further screenings at Ottawa, Melbourne, New Zealand and Busan’s festivals. Music is by Yaffle (a producer for Fujii Kaze and Kenshi Yonezu), and French studio Miyu Productions (Ghost Cat Anzu, A New Dawn) co-produced after joining in June 2025. The project was partly crowdfunded — a March 2026 Motion Gallery campaign raised about 9.6 million yen against an 8 million yen goal — and NOTHING NEW, founded in 2022 with the stated aim of “a world where talent is not crushed,” is one of a small number of boutique Japanese outfits trying to finance auteur-driven animated features outside the production-committee system. Sales company CHARADES has licensed the film to distributors in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
Fate/EXTRA Record game streams a Saber character video
Aniplex released the first character promotional video for Fate/Extra Record, Type-Moon studio BB’s remake of the 2010 PSP game Fate/Extra, spotlighting Saber (voiced by Sakura Tange). The remake launches on January 28, 2027 for Switch 2, Switch, PS5, PS4 and PC via Steam, following several delays, with Marvelous Europe publishing in Europe and Australia.
The project’s development has been turbulent. It was announced in July 2020 for the original game’s 10th anniversary, then slated for 2025, then spring 2026. Bandai Namco Entertainment withdrew as publisher by mutual agreement, and Aniplex has since taken over. Director and planner Kazuya Nino — who produced the original Fate/Extra and worked on the first Etrian Odyssey — left Type-Moon studio BB for personal and health reasons and stepped down from the project, though Arco Wada returns as character designer. The Fate/Extra games take place in an alternate science-fiction branch of Type-Moon’s Fate universe (the fan-named “Extraverse”) and previously inspired SHAFT’s 2018 TV anime Fate/Extra Last Encore, which Netflix streamed outside Japan.
Sources: Anime News Network (Anata o Korosu Tabi, We Are Aliens, Fate/Extra Record).