Red Riding Hood: Anime premieres January 2027 on Crunchyroll

Red Riding Hood: A Detective Story premieres as a TV anime in January 2027 and will be available in Germany on Crunchyroll. The production adapts the Japanese mystery novels by Aito Aoyagi, in which Red Riding Hood solves crimes within familiar fairy-tale worlds. To announce the premiere month, a first longer trailer, a new key visual and six more voice actors have been released.

Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio investigate

In the Japanese original, the work is titled Akazukin, Tabi no Tochuu de Shitai to Deau. Red Riding Hood travels through various fairy-tale worlds and repeatedly encounters mysterious deaths. Rather than simply retelling the familiar stories, she examines the crimes, checks alibis and tries to uncover the background. Pinocchio accompanies her on her investigations.

The new promotional video shows the two main characters meeting and their path into a further criminal case. The unveiled key visual shows Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio back to back, surrounded by other characters from the series.

Cast and production

Yume Miyamoto voices Red Riding Hood, and Akira Sekine takes on Pinocchio. Joining them are Takuya Sato as Jill, Atsushi Tamaru as Antonio, Motoko Kumai as Rodrigo and Kotaro Nishiyama as Paolo. Sakiko Uran lends her voice to Thumbelina, and Ryoko Shiraishi takes the narrator role.

Itsuro Kawasaki is responsible for direction and series composition at the animation studio BENTEN Film. Manami Minakata and Yuko Yahiro handle character design; the music is composed by Jun Ichikawa. The anime airs from January on the Japanese broadcasters TOKYO MX, BS NTV and Yomiuri TV. A specific air date has not yet been named.

Manga already available in German

Crunchyroll confirms the streaming release from January 2027 outside Asia. This also covers the German-speaking market; exact episode dates are still pending.

The novel series has been published since 2020 by the Japanese publisher Futabasha and has reached a total circulation of over 600,000 copies. A manga adaptation by Kanoka Tana is available from Panini under the German title Es war einmal ein Verbrechen. The material was already turned into the Netflix live-action film Once Upon a Crime in 2023.

Other fairy-tale material is also getting new screen versions: Netflix has announced an animated Cinderella film, Steps. Among the other novel and fantasy adaptations for 2027 is also King's Proposal.