A theatrical cut of ‘Sekiro: No Defeat’ debuted in Japanese theaters last year — and now it’s coming to streaming.
ByTrey Alston
September 25, 2026
Key Takeaways
- Crunchyroll will stream Sekiro: No Defeat as an eight-episode series released weekly beginning in January 2027.
- The series restores cuts and adds new scenes omitted from the condensed theatrical version, which opened in Japan on September 4.
- Director Kenichi Kutsuna developed the fully hand-drawn adaptation with FromSoftware, balancing the game’s established lore with changes needed to translate its first-person perspective to anime.
Sekiro, FromSoftware’s famous controllable shinobi, is heading to streaming in the form of a new series — and it’s coming sooner rather than later.
Crunchyroll has confirmed that Sekiro: No Defeat, comprising of eight episodes total, will begin rolling out weekly in January 2027. Whereas in Japanese theaters, Sekiro: No Defeat will be shown as a condensed film.
The project started as a TV anime, with the decision to also cut a feature version coming mid-production — which meant restructuring the story to fit a theater slot. The series restores what the edit squeezed out, adding extra cuts and new scenes, and it no longer has to fit inside its two-hour approx runtime.
Kenichi Kutsuna directs the fully hand-drawn production from Kadokawa, Qzil.la and Arch, and has said the screenplay and storyboards were built alongside FromSoftware, with the studio checking the material against its own lore before signing off.
“There’s a lot of respect paid to the original game, but there were some liberties taken in the sense of point of view and joining the imagery together, as opposed to being placed into the world in the first person,” Kutsuna said in an interview with Variety.
News of Sekiro getting its own series started at Gamescom 2025’s Opening Night Live, where the anime was first revealed. The feature version was then screened as part of Annecy’s Midnight Specials program before its North American premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival.
It opened in Japanese theaters on September 4 with a planned three-week run, landing ninth at the box office that first weekend.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, developed by FromSoftware and has sold more than 10 million copies globally
