I think we can all agree that Pacific Rim 2 is a fantastic idea, as the world just doesn’t have enough depth-perception distorting giant robot cinema action outside of a 3D re-release of the first Power Rangers movie. What the world does have though, are plenty of animated series that Pacific Rim drew it’s inspiration from. Expect the animated series for this property however, to come full circle as it leads into the sequel.
While pre-production on Pacific Rim 2 kicks off this August, Del Toro said to Collider that work on the animated series has already begun. In fact, it’s been in developlment for a while already. And it’s going for that anime style of Jaeger on Kaiju action:
“We are right now in the middle of talking and negotiating with a few Japanese companies for the animation. We are talking to a couple of showrunners that have a strong animation background, [we’re] casting the writers room. What’s great is it’s a great set-up and a link between the first movie and the second movie. It really enhances the mythology of the characters; we have cameos of characters from the first movie, but mostly it’s a new set of characters. New jaegers, except for one or two, [and] new kaijus. It’s really fun.”
One reason why Pacific Rim is getting a sequel and the animated treatment? Simple. MOICHENDISIN’! Pacific Rim made a decent amount of cash worldwide, but it made plenty more in the action figure and highly sought-after toy market as well. Expect the animated series to be merchandised, as well as in the same vein as the original film:
“We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters. I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus.
We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did. And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”
A 13 episode run is currently being planned for the animated series, which Del Toro says will have one long story-arc, instead of relying on a Kaiju of the week premise:
“If it connects we’ll go on [to more seasons], but the thing is I don’t want it to be weekly adventures. I don’t want it to be like Chapter One is a little action thing and it gets resolved in 40 minutes or an hour and then the next episode, [it’s like] nothing happened. My favorite anime series always have a long arc.”
Last Updated: July 11, 2014
