Death Note TV Series & Ultra Man X Simulcast on Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll has really come leaps and bounds since the service launched, and it’s partly due to how in touch the team over there seem to be with the needs and wants of Japanese anime, manga, and drama fans. They’ve ironed out the problems with their subscription plans to make it one subscription, but they’ve also been targeting some great simulcasting so fans don’t need to wait to watch their favourite shows.
Their J-Drama selection is quite large, but isn’t terrible diverse. They’ve only recently begun to move into simulcasting J-drama with the popular Mischievous Kiss 2 series. But now they’re coming in strong by adding two heavy hitters to their line-up of this season’s simulcasts: Death Note and Ultraman X.
You’ve more than likely heard of Death Note, but a lot of people haven’t been quite as aware that a live action TV series adaptation has been on the cards for a while. The series began to air July 5th, and is currently being simulcast on Crunchyroll. The live action films were very good, partially because of their brevity. It will be interesting to see if the TV series can be just as good, but in going the opposite direction.
The series stars Masataka Kubota (The Last Cop, Flowers for Algernon) as Light Yagami and Kento Yamazaki (Water Polo Yankees, Mare) as L – with Mio Yūki as Near, Hinako Sano as Misa Amane and Yutaka Matsushige as Sōichirō Yagami.
Ultraman X is the 27th series in the Ultraman franchise. But as with things like Super Sentai, each series pretty much stands alone. Ultraman is the one where he turns big and fights kaiju. It’s a pretty cool series, and it’s great to see it being made more readily available in the west by Crunchyroll. Their simulcasting of Ultraman X actually marks the first time a tokusatsu show (a live action Japanese TV show with a lot of special effects) has been simulcast in the west.
Ultraman X stars Kensuke Takahashi as Daichi Ozara (his first leading role) and Akane Sakanoi as Asuna Yamase, with a big supporting cast of Xio team members, a special defence force to protect civilization from kaiju.
J-drama has never been quite as accessible in the west as anime, but hopefully Crunchyroll can help change that. Thanks to this season there’s never been a better time to get into J-drama.
