Transformers: CrossAnthrophy

Transformers: CrossAnthrophy (トランスフォーマー クロスアントロフィー, Toransufōmā kurosuantorofī) is a Japanese-American anime series produced by Hasbro's entertainment companies, Hasbro Studios (Season 1-2) and Entertainment One, Aniplex, Kadokawa and Hollowfox Entertainment and animated by Trigger and Production I.G.

This is an anime-styled incarnation of the Transformers franchise, this time as a humanized cyborg version of the Autobots and Decepticons, inspired by the Transformers: Animated episode, Human Error, as well as Gundam, Ghost in the Shell, Gurren Lagann, and Cyborg 009.

The series is developed by Aaron Montalvo, Steven Spielberg, Steven S. DeKnight, and John Rogers with Roberto Orci as an executive producer alongside them, it will be set for 2018 on WonderHub (a replacement for AM-Pony as AM-Networks rebrands into HolCom Networks in 2018, planned to be on AM-TV, but later dropped due to release date) and HollowPlus.

The series is rated TV-MA for violence and language.

About the Show
In the slate of plans for the Hasbro/Hollowfox Humanoidverse franchise expanded after Harmony Unleashed: Equestria Campus Supremacy and Littlest Pet Shop: Blythe X, a Transformers anime series for the franchise is in development with Aaron Montalvo involved with Transformers executive producer Steven Spielberg and Transformers story writer John Rogers, and Steven S. DeKnight as developers. Rogers, Montalvo, DeKnight and Spielberg are involved as executive producers with DeKnight and Rogers as story editors and Spielberg as supervising director.

For an anime series, the animation studios behind Equestria Campus Supremacy has been approached by Montalvo and accepted the deal with people from I.G. and Trigger to be involved, especially Atsushi Nishigori as a character designer alongside Serere Inato, Hiroyuki Imaishi as action battle supervisor, Itsuro Kawasaki as series director, Yuji Kaneko as art director, Eiji Arai as director of photography and Atsushi Takeuchi a mecha designer alongside Shigeto Koyama, Kenji Teraoka and Takahiro Yamada (resembling the robots from G1, Prime, Bayformers and Cybertron/Galaxy Force). Transformers film composer Steve Jablonsky is set to compose the music for the series.

Roberto Orci announced later in 2017 that he moves from ECS to the series as an executive producer alongside Jay Williams at Sneaky Shark.

In 2019, Spielberg becomes a Creative Consultant and still remains as an executive producer, while LeSean Thomas is now a supervising director on the series starting with Season 2 alongside Hiroyuki Imaishi.

Shingo Natsume (One Punch Man, ACCA 13) replaces Kawasaki as series director. And Akira Amemiya will be a collaborative director as well.

In 2020, the series has been renewed for a third and fourth season, making the latter one it's last.

Premise
After a civil war cost life on Planet Cybertron and the Autobots and Decepticons arrived on Earth with terrible damage against all of them, an experiment by the military has turned the robots into artificially intelligent humans known as the Cybertronian Cyborg project, invented by Dr. Jonouchi Tominaga, who also created his cyborg daughter, Sari. The experiment led to the Autobots' biggest struggle between being a human cyborg to helm a mecha Transformer and facing the Decepticons to fight a war that started on a dead planet.

Episodes
The series is planned for 26 episodes split into two seasons of 13 half-hour episodes for a 2018 release. Montalvo is open to extending the series for more seasons as long as the time period is ongoing with the series' ongoing run until it ends. However, it has been expanded for 7 more episodes, which started in November 2018 with the third season in the works.

AM-Networks International, with the distribution partnership of Entertainment One, airs the show in many countries with WonderHub, HollowPlus, Atomix Central, and Nippon Spirits Network in North America, HFXN in Japan, HFXN in North America, HCMax in South Asia, HFXN in Australia, New Zealand, WonderHub in Latin America and Atomix Central in all of Europe. In streaming services worldwide, Hulu, Crunchyroll/VRV, Crackle, and HCNPlay and HCN+ simulcast the series, while Netflix releases all episodes per season.

As of 2018, Transformers: CrossAnthrophy is the only Humanoidverse series to be on Crunchyroll due to its anime style as opposed to the previous series, which has a cartoon style, and due to the High Guardian Spice controversy over not being anime (despite being anime-inspired), it was removed from Crunchyroll and moved to VRV Select.


 * Japan - TV Tokyo, AT-X, BS Japan, TV Aichi, Animax
 * United States - Adult Swim (Toonami), TBS
 * Canada - Teletoon (Teletoon At Night), Telétoon (Telétoon la Nuit)
 * Europe - E4 (United Kingdom, Ireland), FOX Animation (Italy), Game One (France), ProSieben (Germany), Neox (Spain)
 * Latin America - MTV
 * South Africa - e.tv
 * Asia - Animax, FX Asia (All Asia), Channel 5 Mediacorp (Singapore), ABS-CBN (Phillipines), Tooniverse (Korea), TVB Jade (China)
 * Australia - ABC3, TNT
 * New Zealand - TV2

Ratings

 * Japan - R15+
 * United States - TV-14, TV-MA
 * Canada - 14+
 * Latin America - C
 * Australia - M
 * United Kingdom/Ireland - 18

Manga
A manga will tie-in to the series with illustrations by Tamon Ohta with story cooperation by Masahiko Otsuka and Yasuyuki Muto. It is set to be published by Kadokawa's Young Ace Seinen manga banner. The manga is licensed by Viz Media. Transformers comic writer Simon Furman will co-operate with the manga alongside Muto and Otsuka.

Films
During the show's development, they are planning on how to adapt the series into films with MGM and Annapurna producing. In July 2020, three direct-to-video Gaiden anime films have been announced for a late 2020 and early 2021 release. All films will be co-distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (who has a relationship with MGM and eOne) The first direct-to-video film "Transformers: CrossAnthrophy: Wrecker's Ball" is set to be directed by Tatsuma Minamikawa at Production I.G. and Trigger with co-animation services by Digital eMation is released on digital on September 22. 2020 and on home video on October 27, 2020. A Bumblebee centric film titled "Transformers: CrossAnthrophy: Bees and Rods" directed by Atsushi Nishigori will be released around early 2021. And a third gaiden film set to be centric around Optimus Prime named Prime of Quintessence is in development with Nobuyuki Kaneko as director set for a late 2021 release.

Alongside the announcement of three direct-to-video films, Montalvo announced a theatrical film in development at MGM, Hollowfox Toonimation Workshop, Amblin Partners, Trigger, Production I.G., and Hasbro's eOne Animation. The film will be released by United Artists Releasing and Montalvo Releasing in North America and Hasbro's eOne in Spain and United Kingdom and Universal Pictures worldwide in select theatres around 2022, same year as part 1 of Humanoid Squad.

ECS x Transformers: The Allspark of CrossAnthrophy
Recently in 2020, Netflix, eOne, Hasbro and Hollowfox Entertainment made a crossover film with Harmony Unleashed: Equestria Campus Supremacy titled ECS x TF: The Allspark of CrossAnthrophy directed by Miki Brewster, Asaph Fipke and Shigetaka Ikeda and animated by both Titmouse and Studio Trigger with WildBrain Studios co-operating. It is released on May 2020. It will take place between Season 5 of Equestria Campus Supremacy

Humanoidverse/CrossMore: Transforming Avengers feat. Power Rangers
Hasbro's eOne, Disney Television Animation, Marvel Entertainment and Hollowfox Television Animation announced a third crossover event for the Humanoidverse/CrossMore event specials between Transformers: CrossAnthrophy and Marvel's Avengers: Hero Morphs. The event will be animated by Production I.G. with Michael Chang and Yoshiki Yamakawa as directors, written by Christopher Yost, Eric Pearson, Jared Bush and Brandon Easton from a story by Montalvo and Yost. The character designs will be helmed by Haruyuki Morisawa and adapted by Takumo Norita and Hirotaka Kato with mecha designs by Trigger's Akira Amemiya. The story will be inspired by the New Avengers/Transformers comics as well as the Vs. Super Sentai films and Power Rangers crossover specials.

In Early 2020, after the announcement of Power Rangers being involved in the crossover (due to their history with both Disney and Hasbro), Amemiya will join alongside Bandai's PLEX costume design team as well as comic book artist Dan Mora and Super Sentai's lead designer K-SuKe to assist with the megazord and ranger suit designs, as well as Toei's Naohiro Shintani joining alongside Norita and Kato.

The event will start with the first hour produced under eOne and followed by the second hour produced under Disney starting in August 27, 2021.

Transformers: CrossAnthrophy: Edge of Cybertronianism
In 2018, an action game has been announced to be released in the future for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It will be developed by PlatinumGames with direction by Takahisa Taura and supervised by Midoringo Enterprises and Studio Trigger. In 2020, the game is still in development with a teaser shown at Comic-Con @ Home, a title confirmed to be "Transformers: CrossAnthrophy: Edge of Cybertronianism" and a 2021 release for all consoles, and also including XBOX Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

Transformers: BeastAnthrophy
On February 15, 2018, at the New York Toy Fair 2018, Hasbro announced a spin-off for the series based on Beast Wars set in the Anthroverse side of the Humanoidverse. It is in development at IGzwei and Trigger for Hasbro's eOne Animation, Amblin Television and Hollowfox Television Productions. In CCAH 2020, a series has been confirmed with a Q3 2021 start.

In January of 2021, Montalvo Television Networks has shown the series' first look, with Greg Ernstrom being a story editor and co-developer alongside Aaron Montalvo, with both Montalvo and Ernstrom becoming executive producers alongside eOne's Olivier Dumont, Amblin's Steven Spielberg, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey, Aniplex's Shu Nishimoto and Atsuhiro Iwakami, Sneaky Shark's Roberto Orci and I.G. USA's Maki Terashima-Furuta.

Emi Yonemura will be a supervising director and supervising producer, and Nobuyuki Kaneko will direct the series. Yusuke Yoshigaki will design the characters with Shigeto Koyama designing the mechas.

Music

 * Music by: Steve Jablonsky
 * Music Arrangement by: Kevin Kiner, Blake Neely
 * Music Production: Aniplex