Anime
Teenage Mercenary: Anime starts in 2027 at J.C.STAFF
Director Manabu Ono and composer Hiroyuki Sawano are working on the adaptation of the successful Korean webtoon.
The action webtoon Teenage Mercenary will premiere as a TV anime in 2027. The publisher LINE Digital Frontier confirms the broadcast period and publishes an official teaser visual as well as an announcement video. The series is being produced by the studio J.C.STAFF and is produced by HAYATE.
Manabu Ono directs, Hiroyuki Sawano composes
Manabu Ono takes over direction and is responsible for series composition. Koji Haneda designs the characters. The music comes from Hiroyuki Sawano, who among other things composed the music for Solo Leveling. The animation studio J.C.STAFF is carrying out the production.
An official promotional video confirms the key production details and the start year 2027. A list of the Japanese voice actors is not yet available. A specific date for the first broadcast and the number of episodes have also not yet been announced.
This video will only connect to YouTube once you play it.
The former child mercenary returns to his family
The source material comes from the South Korean author YC and the artist rakhyun. At its center is a boy who, at the age of eight, is the only survivor of a plane crash and loses his memory. To survive in a foreign country, he works as a mercenary for ten years.
When his memories return, he travels home and reunites with his family. He attends the same school as his younger sister, but there he once again has to confront violence and threats. In the Japanese version the main character is called Soma Tatewaki; internationally he is known as Ijin Yu.
The webtoon series has been published in South Korea since 2020 and in Japan on LINE Manga since 2021. There it took first place in the annual ranking for the relevant webtoon releases in both 2023 and 2024. According to LINE Digital Frontier, the series had reached 2.84 billion views worldwide by September 2026.
Crunchyroll to stream Teenage Mercenary
Crunchyroll has announced that it will add the anime to its lineup after its start. The release is planned for 2027; a specific simulcast date and a German dub have not yet been named.
The series is part of the collaboration between HAYATE, LINE Digital Frontier and Crunchyroll. The Boxer is also being produced as an anime, while the romance-fantasy series The Remarried Empress premieres in 2027 at TROYCA. Already released webtoon adaptations such as Solo Leveling show the breadth of Korean source material.