When Keiji Inafune announced that he wanted to create a Mega Man successor, his Kickstarter project quickly surpassed his $1 million-dollar goal, reaching the lofty sum of $4 million in total. That kind of attention attracts a lot of eager investors, and in Inafune’s case, television executives. The news of an a animated series was confirmed at the 2014 Anime Expo in Los Angeles this morning, Mighty No. 9 the series will be geared towards children 6-11.
In the series children will meet BECK, a weak transforming combat robot, who was made to fight in a combat robot league as a part of the MIGHTY NUMBERS, the strongest robots in the world. When Beck is the only robot spared from a virus that forces his teammates to destroy mankind, he has to to find various ways to overcome his own inadequacies so he can stop them.
Digital Frontier, an animation company in Japan, is developing and producing the series for a worldwide release. After witnessing the massive support internationally for the Kickstarter campaign, Digital Frontier reached out to Inafune to develop the animated TV series. (Note: Digital Frontier will not be using any of the funding from the campaign for the production of the animated series) Digital Frontier is actively seeking partners internationally including but not exclusive to merchandising, broadcasting and production. The studio has been recently pitching the series and is currently in talks with interested parties with announcements coming soon. This teaser was released earlier.
In September 2013, Keiji Inafune announced the Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of the Mighty No. 9 video game. The campaign reached over a $1 million USD in the first 24 hours, and by its end totaled about $4 million USD. Inafune rose to acclaim as a game designer after developing the well received Mega Man series, with over 50 titles and more than 30 million units sold worldwide across most major consoles and handhelds. He went on to oversee several other hit games, including Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 2, Dead Rising, and many other beloved hits that all went on to become million sellers internationally. In 2010, he started his own game studio titled comcept Inc. based out of Osaka and Tokyo, Japan.
Digital Frontier has a distinguished history of making high quality, full CG content for film, TV and games. Founded in 1994, Digital Frontier is one of the biggest animation houses in Japan equipped with over 350 award-winning artists on hand not only domestically but also in sister studios based out of Malaysia and Taiwan. The studio has built a large portfolio of international hits such as Appleseed (2004), Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina (2007) Summer Wars (2010), and Wolf Children (2012) as well as a strong catalog of CG animation for game related content, including Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), White Knight Chronicles (2008), Tekken: Blood Vengeance (2011), Resident Evil: Damnation (2012), and Metal Gear Rising (2013).
