WIT Studio dropped a major announcement on June 28: LONA, an original TV anime slated for Spring 2027 — and the creative team they’ve assembled is one of the most exciting in recent anime memory. The combination of names alone is enough to put this on every list, long before a single episode airs.
What LONA Is About
LONA stands for Laboratory of Optics and Neural Analysis. Set in the near future, the series follows researchers at this facility who analyze the brains of deceased people using synchrotron light — a real technology inspired by the SPring-8 synchrotron radiation facility operated by RIKEN in Harima Science Garden City, Hyogo, Japan. Their mission: uncover the truth behind a disturbing new phenomenon in which people believed dead are suddenly reappearing and attacking the living.
Think the institutional precision of Unnatural — cold case meets cutting-edge science — but transplanted into a world where the stakes have gone fully apocalyptic. The confirmed voice cast leading the lab is Minako Kotobuki as head researcher Ao, Anna Nagase as trainee researcher Sango, and Fuka Izumi as Mugen, the facility’s unconventional mascot. The ensemble key visual already signals the tone: a gloriously chaotic lab — equipment everywhere, staff in various states of crisis — suggesting a show that can be funny and frightening in the same scene.
The People Behind It
Every credit here is a genuine reason for excitement.
Original concept and screenplay: Akiko Nogi. Her breakthrough came writing Unnatural (2018), a forensic mystery series celebrated for its meticulous plotting and deep empathy. She then wrote Last Mile (2024), a logistics-thriller film that earned widespread acclaim for its tight structure and humane core. LONA is her first anime original. Nogi’s instinct is to build genre tension out of institutional truth — the way real systems handle (and mishandle) death — and a premise involving brain-scanning the dead lands squarely in that territory.
Director: Takashi Katagiri, whose work on SPY×FAMILY CODE: White demonstrated a sure hand with large ensemble casts and tonal range. Character design: Posuka Demizu — the artist behind The Promised Neverland manga — whose work gives even mundane expressions an uncanny interior quality, perfectly matched to a show about reading what people leave behind. The teaser poster alone, a hyper-stylized eye close-up bathed in neon purple, shows Demizu operating in full Promised Neverland mode.
Studio: WIT Studio (Attack on Titan Seasons 1–3, SPY×FAMILY, Vinland Saga). Animation producer Kazuki Yamanaka (SPY×FAMILY, Bubble) and composer Yūko Sébu complete the lineup. Director Katagiri’s words in the announcement, as reported by Anime Corner, capture the energy well: “Something that happens only once in a lifetime happened to me. I got to create an anime from a script written by Akiko Nogi.”
Watch the Teaser PV
For Singapore Fans: What to Watch For
No streaming arrangements for Southeast Asia have been announced — Spring 2027 is still months away and rights deals typically follow closer to air date. But WIT’s recent original projects have landed in Singapore without issue: SPY×FAMILY on Crunchyroll, Vinland Saga on Netflix, Bubble on Netflix. A WIT original with this profile and this creative team is likely to attract strong platform interest, and a deal covering the region would be the expected outcome — though nothing is confirmed yet.
Singapore fans who have followed Nogi Akiko’s live-action work will have the clearest sense of what tone to expect: character-driven, procedurally exact, and willing to get dark. Combined with Demizu’s instinctively unsettling character design and WIT’s production quality, LONA is looking like the most anticipated original anime of early 2027. Follow our anime coverage as more details emerge.
