Warner Bros. Japan revealed a teaser promotional video on Monday for the television anime of Reki Kawahara’s Demons’ Crest novel series. The video reveals the main cast and staff, as well as the 2026 debut.
Update: Warner Bros. Japan has confirmed the anime’s English title is Devils’ Crest.
The anime’s website also revealed a teaser visual.Image via Demons’ Crest anime’s website
©川原 礫／ストレートエッジ／デモンズ・クレスト プロジェクト
The anime will star Haruka Shiraishi as Yuma Ashihara and Konomi Inagaki as Sawa Ashihara.
Shinji Ushiro (Yo-kai Watch, Mazica Party, Scum of the Brave) is the anime’s chief director at Production I.G, and Kenichirō Komaya (Nina the Starry Bride, Kizuna no Allele) is directing the anime. Eiji Umehara (Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- scripts, series composition for Suicide Squad ISEKAI) is overseeing the series scripts, and the original novels’ illustrator Yukiko Horiguchi is designing the characters. Yūki Hayashi (My Hero Academia, Haikyu!!) and Naoyuki Chikatani (Ya Boy Kongming! live-action series and film, I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons anime) are composing the music.
Image via Amazon
© Reki Kawahara, Kadokawa
Yen Press licensed the novels, and it describes the story:
The latest VRMMORPG, Actual Magic, has sealed an entire class of sixth graders in a terrifying game of life or death. Countless dangers await eleven-year-old Yuuma and his friends. One of their classmates has been turned into a monster, and gargantuan beasts lurk around every corner. Their only hope? The demon Valac who has possessed Yuuma’s twin sister. Following Valac’s guidance, Yuuma and his party set out to save their missing friend, Nagi. But an unexpected encounter awaits them…
Kawahara launched the series with the first novel volume in November 2022. Kadokawa released the fourth novel volume on December 10. Yen Press released the third novel volume in English on December 30. Tomoe (art) and Koroku Takano (script) launched a vertical-scrolling manga adaptation of the novels in Wit Studio’s vertical-scrolling manga service HykeComic in November 2022. Kadokawa released the manga’s first compiled book volume in June 2024.
Kawahara is best known for his Sword Art Online novels, which he began in 2001, and serialized from 2002 to 2008 on his website. Kadokawa’s Dengeki Bunko label began publishing a newly-edited print version in 2009, ending the original story with the “Alicization” arc as Kawahara had wrote it on his website with the 18th volume in 2016. The novel series returned with an all-new “Moon Cradle” story arc in 2017, and another all-new “Unital Ring” story arc in 2018, and is now in its 28th overall volume. The series has inspired novel and manga spinoffs, a television anime adaptation with several seasons, an anime film, and proposed live-action series. Kawahara’s Sword Art Online: Progressive spinoff novel series inspired two anime films of its own.
Kawahara also penned the Accel World novel series, which inspired its own manga adaptations, a television anime adaptation, and an anime film. He also penned The Isolator: Realization of Absolute Solitude light novel series. Yen Press is releasing Sword Art Online, Accel World, and The Isolator: Realization of Absolute Solitude novels in English.
Sources: Demons’ Crest anime’s website, Comic Natalie
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
