What happens when the director behind Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) and Mahoutsukai no Yome (The Ancient Magus’ Bride) trades court intrigue and fantasy for dinosaurs, ninjas, and superpowered makeup?
That is the question at the heart of Ryuugeshou no Shinobi (Jurassic Shadows), the first fully original anime project from director Norihiro Naganuma. The series made its world premiere announcement at Anime Expo 2026, where Naganuma appeared alongside Avex Pictures producer Tomokazu Iizumi and Slow Curve producer Toshiaki Obata to unveil the project’s concept, characters, promotional video, and creative ambitions.
On paper, Jurassic Shadows sounds almost deliberately improbable: Tokyo in 2029, a hidden population of dinosaurs living among humans, a secret ninja organization protecting society from prehistoric predators, and a mysterious form of makeup that allows its users to awaken dinosaur abilities. Yet for Naganuma, the appeal lies precisely in bringing those seemingly disconnected ideas together.
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A New Challenge for Naganuma
Naganuma is perhaps best known internationally for his work on The Apothecary Diaries and The Ancient Magus’ Bride, two series whose visual identities are defined by atmospheric environments, carefully controlled color palettes, and an emphasis on character emotion. Jurassic Shadows, by comparison, represents a substantial departure.
It is his first original anime project and his first major attempt at an action-driven series. Rather than adapting an established manga or light novel, Naganuma and his collaborators are responsible for constructing the world, characters, mythology, and story from the ground up.
The project’s origins came from a collaboration between the producers at Avex Pictures and Slow Curve, who wanted to develop something original that immediately stood apart from existing anime. “We should try to collaborate and make something original, cool, and new,” Naganuma recalled of the project’s beginnings. The resulting assignment eventually produced an unusually simple proposition: dinosaurs and ninjas.
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That combination became the foundation for what would eventually become Jurassic Shadows. Slow Curve contributed additional concepts, and the production team ultimately approached Naganuma with the idea of developing it as an anime. Manga artist Youichi Amano, known for his work published in Weekly Shonen Jump, was subsequently brought aboard to create the original character concepts.
For the producers, Naganuma was a natural choice despite the project’s considerable distance from his previous work. Iizumi pointed specifically to the director’s sense of color and his ability to construct visually distinctive imagery. Those qualities had already become an important part of The Apothecary Diaries and The Ancient Magus’ Bride, but Jurassic Shadows would require Naganuma to apply them to something much faster and more physically aggressive.
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Naganuma himself regarded that challenge as one of the project’s greatest attractions. “Making an action-packed anime is actually a very new experience for me,” he explained at the panel. Rather than attempting to reproduce what he had done previously, he saw the series as an opportunity to try something he had never made before.
Prehistoric DNA Meets the Modern World
The premise of Jurassic Shadows begins with a twist on one of the most familiar facts about dinosaurs: their supposed extinction. Set in Tokyo in 2029, the series proposes that dinosaurs did not actually disappear after the meteorite impact. Instead, they survived by secretly passing their DNA through generations of humans. Their descendants have become embedded within modern society, allowing prehistoric predators to exist unnoticed alongside ordinary people. But the dinosaurs are not simply living in hiding. They hunt and devour humans.
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Standing between these predators and the people of Japan is a specialized ninja organization. Its members possess their own connection to the dinosaurs, using a mysterious makeup known as Ryugeshou to activate abilities derived from prehistoric DNA.
The makeup-based power system is one of the project’s most distinctive ideas. Rather than treating dinosaur abilities as an incidental superpower, Jurassic Shadows makes the relationship between characters, inherited DNA, and makeup central to its mythology.
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The production team has indicated that the dinosaurs themselves are likewise deeply connected to the characters. Their abilities and visual designs are not simply a collection of prehistoric powers selected for spectacle; the dinosaurs are tied to the individual stories of the characters who wield their abilities.
More than ten dinosaur species are expected to appear throughout the series, with dinosaurs serving as the primary prehistoric creatures in its world. That gives the premise considerably more room to expand than its initial “dinosaurs versus ninjas” elevator pitch might suggest.
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Four Keywords at the Center of the Story
For Naganuma, the story can ultimately be traced back to four words: memory, dinosaurs, ninja, and makeup. He acknowledged that the combination might sound difficult to decipher at first. What does memory have to do with dinosaurs? Why would ninja culture and makeup belong in the same story? Those connections, however, are precisely what Naganuma wants audiences to discover.
The four concepts are intended to intersect throughout the narrative, linking the characters and the world together in ways that become clearer as the story progresses. Dinosaur mythology is therefore not intended merely as an excuse for action sequences. The production team has emphasized that the prehistoric elements are integrated into the story itself, with even the promotional imagery containing details that may carry significance once the larger narrative is revealed.
The result is a series that appears designed to reward viewers who look beyond its deliberately extravagant premise. At first glance, Jurassic Shadows may seem to be built around the simple novelty of seeing ninjas fight dinosaurs. Underneath that premise is a story concerned with inheritance, memory, identity, and the relationship between a character and the power hidden within them. That contrast between an immediately accessible concept and a more elaborate underlying mythology appears to be one of the project’s defining characteristics.
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Reuniting the Creative Team
Although Jurassic Shadows represents a new direction for Naganuma, the director is not approaching it alone. Several trusted collaborators from his previous productions have returned, including character designer Yukiko Nakatani and color designer Misato Aida, who were both part of the creative team behind The Apothecary Diaries.
Naganuma explained that he had never made an original anime before, making the experience fundamentally different from his previous work. Because of that, he wanted to rely on people whose abilities and creative instincts he already understood.
The producers, meanwhile, credited Naganuma’s relationships with fellow creators as a major reason the project was able to assemble such a strong team. The result is an interesting mixture of familiarity and experimentation: a group of artists whose previous work established a highly recognizable visual language now applying those skills to an action series with an entirely different set of demands.
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Preserving Colors in an Action Series
Color has always been an important component of Naganuma’s work, and Jurassic Shadows is intended to continue that tradition. The challenge, however, is significantly different when the characters are no longer moving through quiet fantasy landscapes or the intricate interiors of an imperial court, but instead through action sequences involving ninjas and dinosaurs.
Naganuma specifically highlighted the question of how to preserve beautiful, expressive color design within an action anime. That required the production to devote considerable attention to the project’s palettes, including the appearance and coloration of its dinosaurs. The team reportedly conducted extensive research and numerous color tests to find designs that were both convincing and appropriate to the story.
The same philosophy extends to the backgrounds. Where The Apothecary Diaries became known for the detail given to its plants, interiors, and historical environments, Jurassic Shadows shifts that attention toward modern architecture. Tokyo becomes more than a generic backdrop for battles; buildings and urban environments are being designed with the same care in order to create a world capable of supporting the series’ supernatural prehistoric conflict. It is this kind of visual continuity that may ultimately make the project feel recognizably like a Naganuma production despite its radically different subject matter.
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There is another signature carried over from Naganuma’s earlier work: the importance of the eyes. When Amano began developing the characters, Naganuma gave him the utmost freedom. His one major request was simple: make their eyes large.
For Naganuma, this is not merely an aesthetic preference. Large eyes provide more room for expression and allow viewers to understand what a character is feeling through their eyes alone. That emphasis on eye acting has been an important part of Naganuma’s animation style, and Jurassic Shadows will retain it even as the surrounding visual language becomes much more aggressive.
The juxtaposition is telling. A character may be surrounded by prehistoric creatures, caught in the middle of a supernatural battle, or undergoing a dinosaur-powered transformation, yet the production still wants the audience to read the emotion in that character’s face.
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Music, Roars, and the Sound of Prehistory
Music is another area where Naganuma has reunited members of his previous creative teams. Artists who worked on The Ancient Magus’ Bride and The Apothecary Diaries are participating in the musical side of Jurassic Shadows, with the director describing the collaboration as an opportunity to once again create a distinctive soundtrack.
The team also spent time developing the sounds made by the dinosaurs themselves, treating their roars and cries as an important part of the series’ atmosphere and action. That attention to sound reflects the larger philosophy behind the production. Jurassic Shadows is clearly intended to be an action series, but spectacle is only one component of the experience. Its creators are investing in color, music, environments, character acting, and sound design to ensure that the world feels cohesive.
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More Than the Gimmick
The easiest way to describe Jurassic Shadows is also the least revealing: dinosaurs and ninjas. It is a pitch that is inherently memorable, which is presumably part of why the concept works. But the Anime Expo presentation made it clear that the creators do not regard the combination as the project’s entire identity.
The dinosaurs have a place within the mythology. The makeup has a function beyond appearance. The ninja organization exists within a larger hidden world. The characters’ relationships with their dinosaur DNA are tied to their personal stories. Even the seemingly straightforward visual elements are being constructed with additional meaning in mind.
That may be the most interesting aspect of Naganuma’s first original anime. With an adaptation, the director inherits a world that someone else has already imagined. With Jurassic Shadows, he and his collaborators are defining everything themselves—from the four ideas at the center of the story to the way a dinosaur sounds, from the colors of a transformed character to the expression in their eyes.
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Naganuma has spent much of his career interpreting and refining stories created elsewhere. Jurassic Shadows gives him the opportunity to establish a world of his own, and it is difficult to imagine a more conspicuous way of announcing that change than by putting a ninja in front of a dinosaur.
The series’ story has already been completed, although its episode count and release date remain undisclosed. A manga adaptation from Kodansha is also in development, with additional information expected to be revealed at a later date.
For now, Jurassic Shadows remains an unusual proposition even by the standards of original anime: a contemporary Tokyo concealed behind prehistoric history, warriors whose powers are awakened through makeup, and a director known for atmospheric storytelling stepping into an action genre for the first time.
The concept may sound strange. That, perhaps, is exactly the point.
Ryuugeshou no Shinobi (Jurassic Shadows) Project PV
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