This Isn’t Exactly the ‘Elden Ring’ Anime We’ve Been Clamoring for but It’s Pretty Cool!
Thanks to the recent release of its long-awaited DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring is back on the top of everyone’s minds.
While you fight your way through the multiple ridiculously difficult bosses that await you in the Land of Shadow, or while you’re trying to parse through the game’s notoriously difficult lore, perhaps you’ve thought, “I’d sure like to just watch this.”
Sure, you could just go and watch someone’s Twitch stream. But we’re in the Great Video Game Adaptation Era! What if there were an Elden Ring series? Better yet, an Elden Ring anime—the treatment Legend of Zelda fans are begging Nintendo for?
And so, when mutterings of an “Elden Ring anime” started circling on social media, it’s easy to understand why people got carried away. Is there actually an Elden Ring anime? If so, what’s the nature of it? The answers are complicated.
Five minutes of gory beauty
There is going to be an Elden Ring anime … in a sense. It’s not officially licensed by FromSoftware, and it’s not going to be a full-length series or film from a major studio in Japan. So if you were looking for a ufotable-helmed Elden Ring announcement … sorry.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not a stunning Elden Ring adaptation ahead of us. Instead, we’re getting a five-minute short from Steins Alter Productions. As you can see from the gorgeous trailer, Steins Alter Productions makes pro-level work. But it’s not an official production.
Still, five minutes of incredibly high-level animation, fan-made or not, is better than nothing! Hopefully, FromSoft will see the short and take the right lessons from it, especially since heavy rumors have been swirling about this year concerning the production of an Elden Ring movie. Both George R.R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki have acted very coy on the subject.
Nor is this the first time that a (Western) fan has created an anime-style short which went viral. There have been multiple fan animations of The Legend of Zelda, for instance—and, again, listen to the people, Nintendo!
Even more famously, animator Narmak created an epic SpongeBob SquarePants anime, which currently has 43 million views on YouTube.
If you’d like to support Steins Alter Productions in their creation of this epic Elden Ring adaptation, and going forward, they (and most of the other animators mentioned in this piece) have a Patreon. The five-minute short is due to release sometime in the fall of 2024.
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