It’s hard to reinvent the wheel when the wheel opens the way to success in a billion-dollar industry. But even with well-established, successful genres like shonen anime, some creators aren’t afraid to get creative. Enter Gachiakuta, an anime series that follows the shonen formula, but frames it with a fresh setting that becomes an immediate hook. Based on the manga by Kei Urana, the anime adaptation by Bones Film will begin streaming on Crunchyroll on Sunday, July 6.
The shonen pattern is simple and ubiquitous: The main character is a teenage male who has to overcome trials and battles, which require him to become stronger through training. Along the way, he forges strong bonds with interesting companions, and usually wields a set of impressive powers or abilities. Shonen usually have an uplifting tone and — with significant exceptions — avoid dwelling on real-life issues. Or if they do touch on the real world, they make those themes into accessories to the main character’s journey of self-affirmation.
That formula has worked wonders for the industry since the days of Dragon Ball, and it continues to be applied today, even in works that try to push the envelope, such as DanDaDan. While staying true to the strong points of the genre, however, Gachiakuta feels immediately different and fresh, which is a big achievement in such a crowded field.
The story follows 15-year-old Rudo, who lives in the floating city of Sphere, a seemingly spotless paradise where the privileged citizens drop all trash, including the people they brand as criminals, into an abyss known as The Pit. Rudo lives in the slums of the city along with the other Tribe Folk, an inferior caste of people thought to be descendants of criminals. Rudo’s adoptive father Regto took him in when Rudo’s father was sentenced to The Pit for a series of murders. One day, Rudo finds Regto stabbed by a mysterious assailant, and is accused of his adopted father’s murder. As Rudo is thrown into The Pit, he swears he will climb up to Sphere and get his revenge on the citizens who are quick to label anything they don’t like as “trash.”
But the setting and tone are so striking that they gave me the feeling I was watching the first truly original shonen anime in a long time. Discrimination is a difficult topic to handle in a story targeted mostly at high school students. But in making “discarded objects” its central theme, Gachiakuta establishes a metaphor that works in plain sight without being cumbersome.
It’s obvious that the Sphereites’ disregard for objects, and their tendency to throw them away as soon as they are used or faulty, means that “undesirable” people get treated as trash too. And it’s clear that Rudo’s respect for discarded objects and his tendency to see a “soul” in them — a philosophy that blossoms into his powers — establishes him as a moral protagonist who wants to make the world a better place.
Still, none of these messages are force-fed to the viewers. They instead arise naturally from a carefully crafted world and environment. The basic idea of having a (literal) trash world, polluted by an uncaring, privileged caste above, creates not just a powerful base narrative, but also a visually striking environment where the characters walk over mountains of garbage and have to wear gas masks to survive. That setting is bleak and cruel. More importantly, it’s different.
In recent years, mainstream shonen have evolved to embrace more mature themes. Carefree personalities like Goku’s have largelylong been set aside. (There are always throwback exceptions.) Modern shonen protagonists, like Deku from My Hero Academia or Denji from Chainsaw Man, have much more serious and traumatic motivations than “I want to become stronger.”
In a sense, these heroes follow the footsteps of Naruto, but in a less egotistical way. (Sorry, Naruto fans, but it’s true.) Still, the darkness in these stories is never at the forefront. Deku gets his powers immediately in MHA, and spends most of his time living the dream of attending superhero school. The Chainsaw Man world is an absolute nightmare, but author Tatsuki Fukimoto chooses to focus most of the story on the silliest slice-of-life aspects of Denji’s life. In Gachiakuta, instead, the darkness is everywhere. But in spite of that, the show still comes alive visually.
I am a massive Bones fan: I believe the studio is unmatched in adapting manga into anime, as proved by Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood or My Hero Academia, where the manga’s pages come alive on the screen, but the anime never overwrites the source material. (Though I’ve been less impressed with their original work, such as Metallic Rouge.) Gachiakuta author Kei Urana has such a unique style, and she pours so much attention into the details of her world, that only Bones could do her justice. Making a toxic wasteland such as The Pit come to life was clearly no easy task, but Bones Film achieves that, with a constant juxtaposition of dark undertones and brilliant slashes of color that almost bleed off the screen.
It’s a teaser of something fans should be looking forward to: the presence of graffiti in the world. In her manga, Urana introduced graffiti designed by artist Ando Hideyoshi, and they serve not just to add color to the bleakness of The Pit, but also as avenues for freedom of expression for the series’ characters. I can’t wait to see how Bones will adapt and exalt this element in the anime.
My only criticism of the first two episodes of Gachiakuta is that I wish the series were even darker. The most powerful scene is Rudo falling into The Pit at the end of episode 1, cursing the Sphereites and saying, “All of you, I’ll kill you all…” That moment sets the tone for a dark, powerful tale of revenge, but the following episode shifts to a more traditional shonen tone, with jokes and comedic moments interspersed between action sequences. I understand the rationale, but I still believe this premise would have perhaps been better suited for a seinen series aimed at an adult audience, and thus allowed to dwell on the more serious themes of the story.
Nonetheless, Gachiakuta seems poised to be the hit of the summer 2025 anime season. It’s telling that its biggest contender is the second cour of DanDaDan season 1, another series that innovates within the shonen formula, without losing sight of what made this genre so successful to begin with.
Gachiakuta begins streaming on Crunchyroll on July 6 at 11 a.m. ET. New episodes will be released every Sunday.
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