Visual Novel 'Dies Irae' Gets TV Anime Adaptation for 2017

by Sakana-san
Dec 19, 2015 4:23 PM | 68 Comments

An anime adaptation of the adult visual novel Dies Irae by game developer Light has officially been announced during a press conference held on December 18. The series will be produced by studio Genco alongside the game's original scenario writer Takashi Masada, who will be in charge of the series composition. Most of the series' game cast will reprise their roles for the anime adaptation, which is expected to premiere in Summer 2017 or later.

In addition to an anime, the game will also receive a manga adaptation by Kazuomi Minatogawa and a novel by Ryou Morise.

Synopsis
On May 1, 1945 in Berlin, as the Red Army raises the Soviet flag over the Reichskanzlei, a group of Nazi officers conduct a ritual. For them, the slaughter in the city is nothing but the perfect ritual sacrifice in order to bring back the Order of the 13 Lances, a group of supermen whose coming would bring the world's destruction. Years later, no one knows if this group of officers succeeded, or whether they lived or died. Few know of their existence, and even those who knew began to pass away as the decades passed.

Now in December in the present day in Suwahara City, Ren Fujii spends his days at the hospital. It has been two months since the incident that brought him to the hospital: a fight with his friend Shirou Yusa where they almost tried to kill each other. He tries to value what he has left to him, but every night he sees the same dream: a guillotine, murderers who hunt people, and the black clothed knights who pursue the murderers. He is desperate to return to his normal, everyday life, but even now he hears Shirou's words: "Everyone who remains in this city eventually loses their minds." (Source: ANN)

Cast
Ren Fujii: Kousuke Toriumi (Yowamushi Pedal)
Marie: Yui Sakakibara
Rea Himuro: Hitomi Nabatame (Kyoukai no Rinne (TV))
Shirou Yusa: Takeshi Maeda
Erii Honjou: Yoshina Makino
Reinhard Heydrich: Junichi Suwabe (Akatsuki no Yona)
Valeria Trifa: Ken Narita (Katekyo Hitman Reborn!)
Wilhelm Ehrenburg: Kishou Taniyama (Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love)
Kai Sakurai: Kei Mizusawa (Ushinawareta Mirai wo Motomete)
Beatrice Waltrud von Kircheisen: Kei Mizusawa
Isaak: Hitomi Nabatame
Göetz Von Berlichingen: Hiroki Yasumoto (Hoozuki no Reitetsu)
Rusalka Schwagerin: Yuka Inokuchi
Eleonore Von Wittenburg: Asami Yaguchi
Spinne: Kouki Harasawa
Riza Brenner: Risato Habuki
Wolfgang Schreiber: Yuuki Tamaki
Mercurius: Kousuke Toriumi

Trailer

The successful fundraising to get the game's anime adaptation happened between March and May of this year on UNEEDZONE.jp. It raised a total of 96,560,858 yen (~800,000 USD).

Source: Dengeki Online

Dies Irae on MAL

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20 of 68 Comments Recent Comments

Looks interesting, so I'm probably gonna watch this.

Jan 1, 2017 9:26 AM by Milk_is_Special

It also has a kickstarter to localize the VN.Too often the anime version is adapted crappies like Grisaia was. Source material is always better.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1986219362/dies-irae-english-localization-project-commences/comments

Jan 1, 2017 8:10 AM by Jason-Wander

pretty characters!o= <3

Mar 16, 2016 9:34 AM by momosemomo

hmm, this looks interesting. So did they say when in 2017?

Feb 7, 2016 7:08 AM by scottymogal

Fai said:
I bet Worm is jizzing himself at the news. Oh well

Mfw I just noticed this

I love you too, Fai

Learning Japanese literally just for this and Sakura no Uta

Feb 7, 2016 4:25 AM by AirConditioner

This visual novel is pretty bad. Generic and cliche.
But fucking Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Kraft... those two are the only reason I'm even going to put up with this cringe.

Jan 22, 2016 6:49 PM by Elder_God_Noden

can i borrow this ill put all credits to MOL and u :)

Jan 13, 2016 8:51 PM by Gellal23

holy shit best news?! just noticed this now, sry if I'm late..
if they fuck this up I'm going to be so mad... the problem is how many episodes this will get, at the very least it needs to be 2cour... at best more than that :x
sooo excited, I hope this will have an awesome OST as well!

Jan 13, 2016 12:30 PM by Vanessa-

10th_man_down said:

Lobke said:
Remind me again when where in 2017.

Dec 22, 2015 9:35 PM by katsu044

It seems so interesting!

Dec 21, 2015 8:10 PM by removed-user

Lolis and nazis, good.

Dec 21, 2015 12:07 PM by error5000

Yet another untranslated VN getting adapted.

Not particularly bothered, this particular genre of VN is almost never good, and looking at the thematic contents of this one, it doesn't seem any different. Very low-brow though, likely to find its way into mainstream, so it should at least be profitable. Earlier comments about literary style aside, the setting and premise does have a strong hint of creative bankruptcy and derivation.

Dec 21, 2015 10:53 AM by Red_Tuesday

This does certainly sound interesting, will definitely give it a try once it's out.

Dec 21, 2015 3:57 AM by Snappynator

Hopefully it's not forgotten later.

Dec 20, 2015 10:24 PM by SecretDinosaur

Veronin said:

Lackluster said:
If someone who isn't a Japanese native speaker tells you that they read Dies Irae they most definitely lie. Or just skimmed over the veneer. Or perhaps used a text hooker with machine translation software. There are very few people who would be able to read Dies Irae in the proper meaning of reading which is not breezing through the text and registering a tenth of its content, but processing and understanding all (or most) of it

Have you actually read it? This used to be my impression of the game's difficulty, and then I went and read it and didn't find it even remotely close to the difficulty that most people hold it to. You most certainly do not need to be a "native speaker" to understand Dies Irae.

Kanji count is also a pretty poor indication of difficulty. Oretsuba (according to this site) has more unique kanji in it than Dies Irae. Does that mean Oretsuba is more difficult? Absolutely not. Hell, I wouldn't even consider Oretsuba "difficult" period unless you struggle with slang. There are certainly some challenging parts in Dies Irae -- namely Reinhard's and Mercurius' dialogue, and maybe Kain's chants which only encompass about 5 or 10 lines in the entire game-- but I don't see why anyone would struggle with the language if they've read any other chuuni game before. If there is any particular difficulty to Dies Irae, it's in the concepts - not the language.

I remember having a bash at it right after I finished the core10k anki deck. I bounced off both quickly and harshly; partially due to Dies Irae being way too chuuni for my tolerance levels, and more importantly due to the lingual barrier that I then found to be too much to cope with. I might have another go at it, just to see how I'd fare this time, but it's just not my genre.

The number of unique kanji instances can hardly be used to gauge the text's difficulty, I agree. I never said anything about their relationship, but rather pointed out that the N1 (not to even mention N2) guidelines encompass considerably fewer kanji than used in the game's script. The better indication of difficulty would be the relation of the kanji count and the script's length (both Dies Irae and Oretsuba are fairly long, hence more opportunities for a new kanji to pop out).

And yet the language is connected to the concepts and ideas. No matter how simple English would be used in the Simulation Argument theory, it would still be difficult to understand even when the singled-out words were all perfectly understandable. You could apply the framework of critical discourse analysis to that, but it'd still boil down to the fact that complex ideas expressed in layman's terms are still difficult to wrap your head around.

Three years ago I was impressed with the language in Dies Irae, and you're really making me want to give it a whirl once again :)

Dec 20, 2015 3:21 PM by Lustreless

Dec 20, 2015 2:18 PM by Veronin

I bet Worm is jizzing himself at the news. Oh well

Will see how it turns out. The idea of nazi focused story does not exactly attract me.

Dec 20, 2015 12:40 PM by Ahenshihael

Nose_Bleed said:
and you'd need to get to like JLPT N2 or N1 to read it properly

Not even close. N1 assumes your knowledge of about 2,1k kanji and some 12k lexemes (unless there have been some changes in those past few years), which is a substantial base that should allow you to read easier visual novels without having to look up every third word. Dies Irae, meanwhile, has almost 2,8k unique kanji in its script, and features extremely difficult passages that incorporate made-up words, older forms of Japanese, and highly literary language. The gap between Dies Irae and most romcom visual novels is as big as the one between a young-adult novel (Hunger Games, or whatever's popular these days) and a book by Neal Stephenson.

There are other visual novels that use even more difficult language (the Astelight series, just to name one), but Dies Irae uses so many gimmicks and plays with language so freely that it would take a veteran translator who worked with actual prose to expect the translation to be at least decent.

If someone who isn't a Japanese native speaker tells you that they read Dies Irae they most definitely lie. Or just skimmed over the veneer. Or perhaps used a text hooker with machine translation software. There are very few people who would be able to read Dies Irae in the proper meaning of reading which is not breezing through the text and registering a tenth of its content, but processing and understanding all (or most) of it.

Nose_Bleed said:
adly, knowing the current anime industry, this adaptation will likely suck a lot, but one can always stay positive I guess.

No need to. I have yet to see a good vn adaptation (Clannad AS was pretty good, fine), and if they fail miserably with simple titles then I dare doubt that a fairly complex scenario would yield anything decent.

Dec 20, 2015 12:36 PM by Lustreless

For the people hoping the VN will be translated: it never will.

Dies Irae is considered by many one of the tougher visual novels to read due to the way it's written (basically like an actual literary novel) and most professional translators wouldn't even lay their hands on it because they'd just butcher the writing which is very specific to Masada Takashi (the author).

This anime adaptation will be the closest you'll ever get to knowing about Dies Irae, unless you decide to learn Japanese and read the original (and you'd need to get to like JLPT N2 or N1 to read it properly)

For those saying it's just another eroge, it's not, not even close, it's a very complex story that isn't about dating girls. In fact, the most complete edition of Dies Irae (Amantes Amantes) isn't even rated 18+.

Sadly, knowing the current anime industry, this adaptation will likely suck a lot, but one can always stay positive I guess.
This is a 50+ hour long visual novel, the anime will never be able to faithfully adapt the story or the writing.

Dec 20, 2015 9:16 AM by removed-user

Dab1za9 said:

Ramkec said:
Its funny how almost all of those visual novels got a bad ass descriptions/synopsis and then you remember they're eroges, fap games, so all of that plot they mentioned goes down the river.

Well, still happy for the fans, if there are any.

funny how you have two animes based of eroge in your Favorites

I knew someone would touch on that. (⌐■_■)

Dec 20, 2015 5:29 AM by Ramkec

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