The Anime News Network is reporting that the Korean production company Tewon Media has finalized a deal with Kodansha that will result in the creation of a TV anime series based on Masashi Tanaka’s wordless Gon manga.  Storyboards for the series are expected to be completed by the end of the year with the first broadcast set for early 2010 (in Japan).  Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within co-director Moto Sakakibara announced back in 2005 that his Sprite Animation was producing a Gon animated feature film (see “Final Fantasy Helmer’s Reel ‘Gon’”), but little has been reported about this project, which was supposed to be released in 2007.

Masashi Tanaka’s Gon manga debuted in 1991 and has won awards and critical praise for its dynamic art and inventive storytelling.  Gon is an irascible three-foot tall dinosaur who somehow managed to survive the extinction of his species and live on into the Paleolithic era where he takes on a variety of much larger animals (often giant mammals) in an inexplicably wide range of environments around the world. 

Perhaps because wordless comics are an acquired taste, Gon has never achieved wide popularity here in the States.  Like the best silent movies wordless graphic novels are often brilliant, but totally reliant on pure visual storytelling and hence demand keen attention on the part of the reader/viewer. 

Gon, which of course requires no translation, was actually the first manga series published by DC Comics (under its Paradox Press imprint during the 1990s).  Recently DC’s CMX manga imprint has picked up the property and has just published the fourth volume in the series.  A Gon anime series might well provide Tanaka’s manga with a wider audience willing to take the time to appreciate its stripped-down, purely visual aesthetic.