A Studio Khara Veteran Directs, With the Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance Studio on Production
The staff list goes a long way toward explaining how a tactics game series landed a Paris world premiere. Hiroyasu Kobayashi of Studio Khara, where he has been a longtime CG director on the Rebuild of Evangelion films, directs. Production pairs AREA 35, the Japanese developer behind the Tiny Metal games, with SAFEHOUSE, the CG studio behind Netflix's Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance. The series is full CG, built in Unreal Engine.
Yusuke Kozaki designs the anime's new characters and shares the character design credit with Go Takahashi on the official site. That site also lists Koji Moriga as art director and credits the anime's score to Yuu Miyake and Jessica Mao. AREA 35 is positioning Zero Line as a new Japan-made IP built for a global audience, and the pilot screened overseas before airing anywhere in Japan.
Live Drawing and a Violin on the Kuri Stage
According to Japanese gaming news site Gamer, the screening on Japan Expo's Kuri stage was followed by a talk with Kobayashi, Kozaki, composer Go Shiina, who scores the Tiny Metal games, and producer Hiroaki Yura, AREA 35's CEO. French streamer Kayane hosted the panel, and the guests dug into the production's background and what makes the series tick.
The screening itself came with extras. Kozaki performed a live drawing session, and Yura played Shiina's music from the games on violin for the crowd.
Lost Tech and a Signal Under the Northridge Alps
The story picks up after a global war, in a world where caches of powerful weapons known as Lost Tech lie dormant. Artemisia holds to a policy of leaving the weapons undetected and untouched, while Nathan argues their locations need to be mapped for crisis management, and tension builds between the two positions. Then a tank platoon from the White Fang unit detects a mysterious anomalous signal beneath the Northridge Alps, and Nathan, Tsukumo, and Wolfram have to decide what to do about it.
Toshiyuki Toyonaga voices Nathan Gries, with Mikako Komatsu as Wolfram, Riho Kuma as Nora Godwin, and Kenjiro Tsuda (Kento Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen) as Tsukumo Isoroku.
Looking Ahead
What premiered in Paris is a pilot episode, and that's the current state of the project: no broadcast date, episode count, or streaming partner has been announced. The teaser is up on the official Tiny Metal YouTube channel, and the official site's character page lists a fifth character, Lysandra Echo, with no voice actor attached yet, so more casting news is presumably coming.
Japan Expo 2026 runs through July 12, and AREA 35 says further updates will come through the project's official channels. For now, international fans are ahead of Japanese ones; the pilot has only ever screened in France.