Blue Miburo is an upcoming anime series based on the 2021 Japanese manga series, The Blue Wolves of Mibu, written and illustrated by Tsuyoshi Yasuda. Ahead of the show’s 2024 release, director Kumiko Habara and animation producer Hiroya Nakata made an appearance at Anime Expo to speak about the show and what fans of the manga can expect to see.
This series takes place around 1863, during the Bunkyu Era in Japan. The story follows Nio, a young orphan who was adopted by an elderly grandmother who runs a restaurant. Nio, along with his younger sister Iroha, were raised alone by their grandmother, and helped her out at the restaurant every day. Everything was fine and normal until mysterious kidnappings started taking place in their village, and soon, the siblings were met by two samurais — Hijikata Toshizou and Okita Souji (who are based on real-life Shinsengumi commanders). After a close encounter with the kidnappers, Nio, who feels helpless and unable to protect his family, joins the two samurais and aims to become a Miburo with them. This unique story tells the tale of a time of turmoil within Japan’s history, but through the perspective of the young children who had no way to fend for themselves.
For Habara, the most important thing in the production process was to remain accurate to history. “We had the original manga to reference, so I wanted to recreate everything as accurately as possible. I went to Kyoto on a location scouting trip, and there are a lot of places that are still preserved from that time period, [which was also helpful].” Even though Japan is in an era of peace now, it wasn’t always this way. “160 years ago, Japan was a place children couldn’t live freely without fearing for their lives,” Habara said. “So, the idea of having these children work alongside the samurais that wanted to make it a better and safer world is a unique mixture of fiction and non-fiction.”
Once the locations were scouted and chosen, the next step was to cast the characters. Here, Nakata’s main focus was on finding versatile actors. “The series has a lot of comedic and serious scenes,” he started. “All voice actors are talented in what they do, but we just wanted to make sure that whoever we cast would be able to switch between these lighthearted and heavy scenes easily when they needed to.”
When it came time to compose the opening and closing songs, as well as the music played throughout the series, Nakata went back to an old friend and colleague. “The music is composed by Yuki Hayashi, who I worked with on My Hero Academia, and who has also done the music for Haikyuu!!” he began. “We asked him to incorporate more traditional instruments with the music for this series, and we even talked about including rap lyrics, too. [Another reason we chose Hayashi is because] he’s also from Kyoto.”
Blue Miburo is set to premiere later this year in October.
