Production I.G.'s Musashi Miyamoto

One of anime's legendary creators and directors, Mamoru Oshii, best known for Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, and The Sky Crawlers, is developing and writing a Production I.G. samurai anime film. The film, "Musashi Miyamoto: Sōken ni Haseru Yume" (Musashi Miyamoto: The Dream of Riding with Two Swords), is scheduled for release early summer of 2009.

The staff list looks to be a mighty one indeed and most seem to have had some kind of role in Oshii's Ghost in the Shell films. Joining Oshii, Mizuho Nishikubo (animation director of the GITS films) will be taking the role of director. Nishikubo also directed the "Otogi Zoshi" TV series. Animation director Kazuto Nakazawa (Samurai Champloo and Kill Bill: Volume 1) is set for character design. Kazuchika Kise (Blood+, GITS, and Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone) as animation director and supervisor; Shuichi Hirata (GITS 2, Metropolis) in art design; and Makoto Endo (Blood+ and GITS:SAC) in computer animation.

The story will center on Musashi Miyamoto, one of the most famous swordsmen in Japanese history. He pioneered the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū style of two-sword fighting and wrote The Book of Five Rings, a book that has been compared to Sun Tzu's The Art of War for its insight on tactics and strategy.