CHIRURAN: SHINSENGUMI REQUIEM Gets The Live-Action Drama Treatment In Spring 2026!
I don’t always get to digest foreign language news outlets, and it’s not frequent enough that I get to catch up with action director Kensuke Sonomura. For this, I’ve come to – albeit finally – learn that he’d been working behind the scenes of upcoming sword drama, Chiruran: Shinsengumi Requiem, which bows in the Spring of 2026.
Kazutaka Watanabe (Kishibe Rohan Does Not Move, Showtime 7) is directing the new series from a script by Masaaki Sakai (“Cold Case” 2 & 3), and based on Shinya Umemura and Eiji Hashimoto’s manga which became a hit after launching in 2010 from Coamix. Announcements have been pouring since October, in fact, signaling a cast led by Yuki Yamada who plays legendary swordsman Hijikata, in the show’s reimagined telling of the elite police squad that ran for several years during the 1860s.
Chiruran: Shinsengumi Requiem hails from TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), Japan’s pioneering SVOD service U-NEXT, and production outfit THE SEVEN, which describes its take on the IP as follows:
…Set in Kyoto during the Bakumatsu period, the story depicts the intense and passionate lives of the Shinsengumi — the most formidable samurai group of their time — through explosive action and bold reinterpretations of historical events.
Driven solely by his desire to become the “strongest,” the hot-blooded Hijikata meets Isami Kondo and joins forces with strong-willed comrades such as Soji Okita and Hajime Saito, ultimately forging the legendary Shinsengumi that would make its mark in history. Their short but blazing lives — filled with purpose, conviction, friendship, and betrayal — are brought to audience through strikingly modern and alluring character designs and some of the fastest sword-fighting choreography ever seen in Japanese drama…
Rounding out the current cast are Nobuyuki Suzuki, Aoi Nakamura, Kanata Hosoda, Shuhei Uesugi, Kisetsu Fujiwara, Yosuke Sugino, Yanagi Shuntaro, Shuto Miyazaki, and Hihio Iwanaga, along with Yuki Sakurai, Eita Okuno, Mitsuomi Takahashi, Nobuaki Kaneko, Kento Nakajima, Masanobu Ando, and Go Ayano.
The production team is a massive one as well, with Akira Morii (“Alice in Borderland,” “Yu Yu Hakusho”) serving as chief producer. Also producing are Mamoru Inoue (“Double Face,” MOZU) and THE SEVEN’s Kazuya Shimomura (“Yu Yu Hakusho,” The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill), with THE SEVEN’s Tomofumi Akahane (“Alice in Borderland S3”, “Yu Yu Hakusho”) serving as VFX Producer among the team and more.
Of course, there’s also Sonomura, the man whose action sequences have seized our collective attention since breaking out as the filmmaker behind hits like Hydra and Bad City, and action-directing the hell out of the Baby Assassins franchise. You can see some of that goodness as well in the playlist below, consisting of seventeen character teasers with more to come based on what I’ve read.
Almost all the promos average about eleven seconds, so hit play and run it through and it’ll be a breeze. And, let’s hope we’ll get a release here in the States as well!
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
