The official Japanese website for the recently announced Blade of the Immortal television anime is now online with a sample image. The site also revealed that the project will run on Japan's AT-X animation satellite channel. Yoshimitsu Yamashita (Murder Princess, Samurai Champloo animation director) will design the characters that Production I.G's BeeTrain subsidiary (.hack// franchise, Noir, El Cazador de la Bruja) will animate.

The May issue (on sale on March 25) of Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine will confirm that a television anime version of Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal manga will premiere this summer in Japan. Tomokazu Seki (Escaflowne's Van, Gungrave's Beyond the Grave) will voice the main character Manji - a rōnin swordsman condemned to immortality unless he kills a thousand evil men for all the good men he killed. Rina Satou (Negima!'s Negi, Bamboo Blade's Satori) will play Manji's fellow traveler Rin. Hirofumi Nojima (Kagehisa Anotsu), Kazuya Nakai (Taito Magatsu), Masashi Ebara (Sabato Kurui), Katsuyuki Konishi (Eikū Shizuma), Daisuke Namikawa (Araya Kawakami), Mamiko Noto (Makie), Megumi Toyoguchi (Hyakurin), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Giichi), Shinichiro Miki (Shira), and Maaya Sakamoto (Machi) complete the cast.