To commemorate the Lunar New Year, HoYoverse’s hit action game Honkai Impact 3rd is getting a new anime adaptation.
Shared on Twitter by the anime news account @AniNewsAndFacts, the upcoming web animation, titled Golden Courtyard, will consist of two parts and launch on Jan 20. While few plot details are currently available, a piece of promotional artwork shows several characters having a snowball fight. The developers of Honkai Impact 3rd have not yet clarified if, or how, this series will tie in to the canon of its video game counterpart.
This is not the first time that Honkai Impact 3rd has gotten an animated treatment. In 2020, a slice-of-life style series titled Cooking With Valkyries was released, featuring the game’s cast making various recipes. While the series itself is not considered canon to the game, certain episodes were inspired by canon events.
In July of the following year, another animated adaptation, titled ELF Academy, made its debut. This comedy series revolves around beings called ELFS, humanoid weapons designed to fight Honkai that gradually developed sentience and started living alongside human beings. This series ran for only 10 episodes, ending in September 2021.
Honkai Impact’s Beginnings
The mobile version of Honkai Impact 3rd launched on October 14, 2016, predating the explosive popularity of HoYoverse’s follow-up title, Genshin Impact, by several years. The game’s setting involves a cyclic, world-shattering phenomenon called Honkai, which ravages human civilization as plagues, natural disasters, and monsters called Honkai Beasts. The ongoing battle against the Honkai is waged by warriors called Valkyries (also called Valkyrja), who often encounter conflict from opposing groups that seek to harness the Honkai’s power for their own ends.
The game’s combat system is heavily combo-based, with players using the Valkyrie’s large move sets to maintain long strings of attacks against enemies. Honkai’s popularity led to the launch of a PC edition in October 2021.
In addition to Golden Courtyard, an anime adaptation for Genshin Impact is also on the horizon. HoYoverse is teaming up with animation studio ufotable (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Fate/Zero) to produce an animated series based on the hit game. In September, ufotable released a concept trailer, along with stunning promotional art featuring several main characters, including Luther, Aether, Paimon, Zhongli and Ningguang, among others. As of now, this series does not have an official title or release window.
Golden Courtyard will debut on Jan. 20. Honkai Impact 3rd is available now for iOS, Android and PC.
Source: Twitter
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