Bandai Entertainment has announced that the new anime series Kurokami, which is being produced by Sunrise, will air almost simultaneously in Japan and the U.S. on Thursday, January 8th (and in South Korea on January 9th).  This won’t be the first same-day airing of an anime series in the U.S. and Japan, but it will be the first time that a series will air simultaneously in a bilingual format—the Kurokami broadcast that will appear on the ImaginAsian Television network (IATV) will be an English dub, which NYAV Post began working on more than a month ago using scripts and line animation. 

Bandai Entertainment plans to release the first Kurokami DVD here in the U.S. in the first or second quarter of 2009.  Aside from its innovative bilingual nature, the Kurokami experiment is also interesting because it involves using television rather than the Web for the simultaneous release of a new anime series, demonstrating that anime producers are ready to try and use a variety of media to overcome the time lag between release of a series in Japan and its debut in the U.S., a gap that has led to a lot of illegal downloading.

The Kurokami anime series, which Sunrise expects to run for more than 20 episodes, is based on the 8-volume ongoing seinen manga series from the talented Korean creators Dall-Young Lim (writer) and Sung –Woo Park (artist).  Kurokami is published in Japan by Square Enix in the bimonthly Young GanGan magazine, which is why Kurokami is considered a “manga” rather than a “manhwa” series.  Yen Press publishes Kurokami here in the States as Black God--and the action-packed manga series, which deals with “mototsumitama,” or “superhumans,” just might be a prime beneficiary of the increased exposure the property will receive through the wide and quick distribution of its related anime series.