Entertainment

Netflix’s new animé Sol Levante is a visual spectacle

A hand-drawn 4K HDR short

Published

March 30, 2020

Netflix has been ultra aggressive in expanding its animé library especially in the last two years. The latest installment — Sol Levante — is a visual spectacle that the company says is a “culmination of art, technology, and curiosity.”

The primary purpose of the project is to explore how Japanese animé projects can be translated into 4K HDR. The tech, after all, isn’t all that new. Plenty of Netflix originals like Marvel’s Daredevil, Bird Box, and even To All The Boys P.S. I Still Love You are available in this format.

The challenge is how to get hand-drawn animation up to speed. Ultraman, another Netflix animé project, is available in 4K HDR. However, it uses CG animation versus hand drawings. That’s what Haruka Miyagawa (Creative Technology Engineer) and Akira Saitoh (Director, involved in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, et. al) — the leads of the Sol Levante project, pursued.

Sol Levante – a visual spectacle

Netflix gave us an early look at the final output. Sol Levante is a four-minute showcase of years worth of work by a lean six-person team and it’s a sight to behold.

Its synopsis reads: A young warrior and her familiar search for the sacred place said to fulfill wishes. It’s best not to anger the ancient guardians and spirits.

If you’re an animé fan — especially of the more popular battle-type ones — your mind will race right away thinking how this level of visuals can translate to an iconic sequence or battle scene. And for the most part, that’s what this short is — an iconic sequence. As a hand drawn 4K HDR animé, it’s one of the firsts of its kind.

Without spoiling anything, the narrative of the short mirrors the theme of the project. It’s not an easy journey, but if you push through, you’ll come out of it feeling renewed.

Netflix pushing to innovate

There are two main driving forces in the development of this project:

To support creatives in bringing more of their ideas to life
Offer an outstanding and more immersive user experience for Netflix subscribers

The Sol Levante project was a test of how feasible it is to produce hand-drawn animé in 4K HDR resolution. In the duration of the project, they have identified a process but it might take a while before anyone else gets onboard.

During a media briefing, Miyagawa highlighted how the biggest hurdle is 4K. It requires a major overhaul of the artists workstation and workflow.

One of their first learnings is that the resolution meant hand drawings needed to be completed on a much larger piece of paper than standard A4, or scanned at a very high resolution. This wasn’t a viable solution which meant drawings had to be done digitally on a tablet. The challenge is that most animé artists lack training and equipment to go digital.

The HDR part involves less friction. Animation studios need only to invest in professional monitors with high dynamic range. At present though, the options are still quite pricey — even for professional studios.

Encouraging other creators

The team behind Sol Levante, while ambitious, aren’t delusional. They realize the challenges it will take to get more people interested. They know that “change is hard” and the whole workflow overhaul “can be seen as intimidating to studios and artists.” So they are more than willing to cooperate and collaborate.

Netflix will release the raw materials used in Sol Levante for download and experimentation. By doing so, they hope to connect with more animators about new technology, to partner with manufacturers to better support the animé industry, and to work with anime studios to apply findings to future productions.

Being veterans in the industry, they feel Japanese animation studios might not be immediately open to the idea. So they’re hoping animators from other countries step in.

Building hope and excitement

Director Akira Saitoh hopes those who will watch Sol Levante will feel heightened levels of excitement and immersiveness. While reactions will vary due to personal preference she hopes it inspires thoughts of “Okay, I would like to see other types of content or genre done in this technology.”

Asked why it’s called Sol Levante, Saitoh explained, “Sol Levante means sunrise in Italy. In ancient Egypt when the sun sets in the west, it dies. When it comes up in the east, it’s a symbol of resurrection. It’s been reborn. Reborn was a big theme in this project.”

That sense of hope and feeling renewed is something the project hopes to evoke in both animé viewers and creators.

Sol Levante will be available on Netflix globally on April 2, 2020.

Entertainment

1st teaser trailer, details for Death Stranding Isolations series unveiled

Animated series to debut on Hulu on Disney Plus

Published

October 31, 2026

GadgetMatch

A new teaser trailer for the upcoming Death Stranding Isolations series on Hulu on Disney+ has been revealed.

The upcoming animated series is set to debut in 2027. It is set in the world of Death Stranding immediately after the game’s protagonist Sam reconnects the continent of North America via the Chiral Network.

The series will tell a completely new story separate from that of the video games. The narrative will focus on a young man and woman as they set off on an adventure.

As America is reborn from the ashes, the renewed connections that bind it together bring about new and unforeseen consequences.

In this tumultuous new landscape, there are some who walk a different path to the one chosen by Sam and his Bridges comrades.

One is a wise old man who connects people through a method that defies all reckoning. There is also a female soldier ensnared in a cycle of war and destruction.

Moreover, there is a boy who seethes with rage at the absurdity of his life, and a girl who chose to sever all ties with the outside world. Fate has other plans for her, however, and chance encounters see her launched headfirst into a world she does not recognize.

Death Stranding Isolations is written by Tow Ubukata (Activator, Bone Ash, Project Darkness) and directed by Takayuki Sano (Jujutsu Kaisen 0 – The Movie, Attack on Titan The Final Season).

The series is animated by E&H production (NINJA KAMUI, BULLET/BULLET, the Magic Knight Rayearth Television series 2026) with original character design by Ilya Kuvshinov (Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, The Wonderland).

The series is executive produced by Hideo Kojima and produced by KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS.

Entertainment

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 now streaming, Cyberpunk 2077 update coming

Edgerunners returns to Night City

Published

October 21, 2026

Rodneil Quiteles

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is now streaming on Netflix, with all 10 episodes available to watch. CD PROJEKT RED and animation studio TRIGGER have also announced a new update for Cyberpunk 2077, bringing content inspired by the anime to the game.

The Edgerunners 2 Update (Update 2.5) launches on October 22, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. A Nintendo Switch 2 release will follow shortly.

Edgerunners returns with a new cast

Set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 tells a standalone story through an entirely new cast of characters. The series follows a veteran edgerunner, a young cinephile, a chrome-obsessed delinquent, and a Snake Nation netrunner as their stories explore vengeance and redemption in Night City.

Director Kai Ikarashi leads the new installment, with Kanno Ichigo serving as lead character designer. Masahiko Otsuka returns as a collaborator, while Bartosz Sztybor serves as showrunner, story writer, and producer.

Both Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 are available exclusively on Netflix.

Cyberpunk 2077 gets a new update

CD PROJEKT RED announced the Edgerunners 2 Update alongside the anime’s premiere on October 20. The free update will introduce new items and features to Cyberpunk 2077, including content inspired by the new series.

The update launches on October 22 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. CD PROJEKT RED has yet to announce the Nintendo Switch 2 release date beyond confirming that it will follow shortly.

The studio will reveal more details during a special episode of REDstreams on October 21. The broadcast will air on Twitch, YouTube, and Steam, with official patch notes scheduled for release on the same day.

Entertainment

Now Playing: Clayface

Finally, a supervillain story worth watching.

Published

October 21, 2026

GadgetMatch

The thing about supervillain movies is that they rarely let their villain be a villain. From Venom to Kraven the Hunter, they’re contrarian dreck that reframe a mass murderer as a “misunderstood anti-hero” who’s overshadowed by a corny do-gooder. Boo hoo. Thankfully, Clayface got the memo to not do that, even if it came pretty close.

Clayface reimagines how rising actor Matt Hagen becomes one of Batman’s most (literally) monstrous enemies. Here, Matt is horribly disfigured by gangsters then abandoned by his friends. He finds hope in Dr. Caitlyn Corr’s genetic experiments, but loses his body, mind and soul as her miracle cure enables his worst impulses.

Basically, Clayface is everything Joker failed to be. It’s a sympathetic origin story for a twisted Batman villain, but it doesn’t make excuses for them. If Joker scapegoats Arthur Fleck’s madness and anarchy on the nebulous enemy that is Society the way an aimlessly rebellious teenager would, Clayface throws all the blame and consequences on Matt — and Matt alone.

I like how Matt’s story is a tragedy of his own making. He wasn’t always evil, and he really was wronged by scum. Worse, his identity is cracking, which is a bit of psychological torment that I wish the movie dwelled on more. And yet, he always had a way out. He just keeps choosing the cruelest and greediest options instead.

This is the kind of agency most supervillain movies — or any movie about a juvenile anti-hero fighting The System, really — lack, but Clayface has an abundance of. There was a moment I thought that the movie would still side with Matt despite everything he’s done, only for him to cross a line. In the end, he can only blame himself when he loses everything and everyone.

However, I was let down by Clayface’s violence. There’s blood and guts, alright, but they’re too inconsistent. For every morbidly satisfying disemboweling or close-up of a nasty scarring, there’s a moment where the movie cuts away from these too early. I lost count of how many times Clayface jumped to the next scene before really letting blades sink into flesh, or how many of Matt’s kills were done offscreen.

Minus the pivotal deaths, the kills are also not as diverse as I’d hope from a killer powered by Play-Doh and imagination. It’s just variations of stabbing and bludgeoning. My issue isn’t a lack of brutality, but that this reluctance to push it further or just show it gives the well-built tension a lackluster payoff. A movie about superpowered revenge in one of fiction’s vilest hellholes should be more depraved and creative.

To be fair, this is more the fault of the movie’s constraints, not a lack of skill or thought. Effects cost time and money that Clayface clearly didn’t have a lot of. This would also explain why Matt is limited to identity theft not by molding himself, but via clever camera work. For what it’s worth, I see and respect the smart workarounds the movie found to deliver the dread.

Still, I like Clayface. It’s the rare supervillain movie that’s self-aware and honest about its darkness. It humanizes its villain, but commits to their monstrosity while rejecting forced redemption. It’s also a grisly thriller that works on its own merits, yet complements DC Comics’ latest growing cinematic world. That said, Batman can’t arrive sooner to beat Matt’s melted face in.