Pacific Rim: The Black – Australia has fallen in this first look at the Netflix anime series

Two hundred tons of awesome (and a brief period of time that definitely didn’t add a sequel wherein audiences were asked to believe that Charlie Day could be a credible villain) later, and Pacific Rim is finally making a return in the best format possible: Anime. Guillermo Del Toro’s 2013 masterpiece of mech on kaiju action had no shortage of anime influence within its cinematic DNA, and now that world is being explored further in a new series where the apocalypse needs to be canceled once again.

The big difference here? The Kaiju are back yet again, and they’ve started gaining ground in our dimension. Australia has fallen and it’s not up to two teenage siblings to enter the Drift and save the day. They’ll instead be embarking on a more personal journey in an effort to rescue their parents, piloting a decommissioned Jaeger in enemy territory and with the odds stacked firmly against the,

Netflix released two images for the series, and a synopsis which you can see below. Sadly, there’s no mention if this Ozzie Jaeger follows the bonkers naming protocol of previous mechs. I’m hoping this one is called Dingo Barbie by the end of the series.

There was a time when Kaiju rose from the Pacific Rim only to encounter gigantic robots, Jaegers, built to fight them back. That time has passed. Now, Australia has been overrun by Kaiju, forcing the evacuation of an entire continent. Left behind, teenage siblings Taylor and Hayley embark on a desperate search for their missing parents, teaching themselves to pilot a battered, long-abandoned Jaeger to help in their quest and give them even the slightest hope of surviving.

Judging by those screens, Pacific Rim: The Black is going all-in on 3D CGI for its animation. I’m not exactly a fan of this method to be honest, because it usually results in unnatural animation, lifeless characters, and a stuttering frame-rate that looks like a Pentium II computer trying to run a game of DOOM Eternal.

Still I’m hungry for more Pacific Rim and the smaller scope of the story has me interested enough to give it a binge when it arrives. Craig Kyle (Thor: Ragnarok) and Greg Johnson (X-Men: Evolution) are acting as showrunners, so even if the animation doesn’t make me want to empty my clip in excitement, I’ve got faith that story-wise it could be something special.

Pacific Rim: The Black will drop sometime in 2021 on Netflix. Will it ever answer the eternal question of what happened to Hannibal Chau’s other shoe? Tune in to find out!

Last Updated: October 28, 2020