Nadesico, Silent Möbius’ Kia Asamiya Teases New Anime Project

Kia Asamiya, prolific manga author, animator, and artist is working on a new anime project.

Kia Asamiya, also known through his real name Michitaka Kikuchi, is a legendary animator, character designer, and mangaka. He is the original character designer of Martian Successor Nadesico, designing its iconic character Ruri Hoshino. Asamiya is also the original creator of Compiler, Silent Möbius, Corrector Yui, and Steam Detectives.

While Kia Asamiya mainly focuses on his manga career nowadays, he is now coming back to the anime industry with a new project.

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Kia Asamiya teases new anime project connected to his past series

On January 28, 2022, Kia Asamiya teased through his Twitter account that he just finished working on a certain anime project at an animation studio. He also confirmed this new anime project is related to a franchise he previously worked on. We translated his tweet below.

Kia Asamiya: “Yesterday, I went to a certain animation studio to pick up my stuff. I have a connection with this franchise, so I’m really grateful I was able to work on this project. I think it’s been decades since the last time I worked at an anime studio. It was only the director, the producer, and me, so we had a lot of fun together. There will be an announcement with all the details at a later date. Look forward to it!”

Kia Asamiya teasing a new anime project on TwitterIntroducing the legendary Kia Asamiya/Michitaka Kikuchi

Born in 1963, Michitaka Kikuchi grew up as a big fan of Space Battleship Yamato, Star Wars, and Batman. He quickly entered the anime industry and one of his earliest and most famous works as a character designer is Sonic Soldier Borgman in 1988.

Michitaka Kikuchi also started a mangaka career under the name Kia Asamiya in 1986 with Shin Seiki Vagrants. He also handled the manga version of Nadesico. Until the early 2000s, Kikuchi would strictly separate this identity from his anime work, and would even go as far as claiming they were two different people.

Current mangaka career as Kia Asamiya and My Favorite Carrera

In the early 2000s, Kia Asamiya started mainly focusing on his manga career and made several Batman and Star Wars official manga adaptations.

Furthermore, Kia Asamiya notably launched the atypical series Kanojo no Carrera (My Favorite Carrera) in 2004. The manga focuses on Reina, a manga editor who inherited a Porsche Carrera from her late father, as she slowly dives into street racing and lesbianism. The series is still ongoing now with Kanojo no Carrera GT3. There’s also a finished spinoff, Zero Angel, which focused on Reina’s younger cousin Aika who is a professional racer and legendary street racer.

Kanojo no Carrera GT3 Volume 1 cover featuring Reina and her Porsche

Asamiya didn’t completely stop working on anime as he recently did Key Animation on Star Blazers 2199 and Aikatsu Friends for example. That was from his own studio, Studio Tron though, as he specified in his tweet that it’s been decades since he actually last went to an animation studio for work.

Kia Asamiya was also one of the many artists who designed an Unique Blade character in Monolith Soft’s JRPG Xenoblade 2 in 2017. He was the character designer of Musubi (Vess in English). Monolith Soft is already confirmed to be working on at least one new RPG, and it’s rumoredly Xenoblade 3.

Musubi’s artwork in Xenoblade 2 on Nintendo Switch by Kia Asamiya

Lastly, for over five years, Kia Asamiya has also been selling his works at Comiket with his friend and fellow legendary artist Kenichi Sonoda. (Bubblegum Crisis, Gall Force, Gunsmith Cats). They were together again at C99 in December 2021, with Sonoda in black, and Asamiya in white:

Kenichi Sonoda and Kia Asamiya at Comiket 99

The post Nadesico, Silent Möbius’ Kia Asamiya Teases New Anime Project by Iyane Agossah appeared first on DualShockers.