Blue Lock Director Reveals Why Crunchyroll’s New Action Series Goes Old-School

The Mask of the War God. The Spider Mask. The Chameleon Mask. The Cat Mask. The Warrior Mask. Each grants its wearer a different supernatural ability. Sometimes, they function like playful Mario-style power-ups. Other times, the overwhelming power involved could lead to unimaginable calamity.

The Vermilion Mask’s electrifying premiere — which airs in October on Crunchyroll — wastes little time putting these powers to use as it introduces apprentice mask maker Peru d’Arrest and his world-spanning quest to destroy his former master’s masks. There are epic fights, compelling villains, and a sword so preposterously wide it makes Cloud Strife’s Buster Sword look small by comparison.

It sounds overwhelming. Remarkably, The Vermilion Mask never feels that way.

That clarity is deliberate. Director Tetsuaki Watanabe, who previously helmed the first season of the sensational soccer anime Blue Lock, believes modern anime can sometimes bury its storytelling beneath spectacle.

“With a lot of today’s flashy action and over-elaborate direction, I often find myself thinking, ‘I cannot tell what is going on,’” Watanabe tells Polygon via email. “So we have deliberately gone with old-fashioned, classic direction to make things easy to follow.”

As part of Polygon’s 2026 Fall Preview, he talked about the importance of telling anime stories with coherent action — and why he chose to adapt this relatively obscure manga.

Clear action is The Vermilion Mask’s secret weapon

The Vermilion Mask combines contemporary animation techniques with the sensibilities of shows from the 1990s and early 2000s, when Watanabe believes anime direction was easier to parse.

“There is no point in a moving scene if the direction is so highbrow that it never reaches the viewer,” he says. “I want this series watched by as wide an audience as possible, from children to adults, so we are making it with direction that is as easy to follow as we can manage.”

That's readily apparent in the first episode. The Vermilion Mask moves at an extraordinary pace, introducing its hero, magical rules, political tensions, and central quest in less than 21 minutes while still delivering plenty of action. Yet every new revelation arrives exactly when the audience needs it. Even when characters move at incredible speeds or exchange supernatural attacks, their positions and objectives remain clear. The action may be exaggerated, but it’s always coherent.

The same principle applies to the masks themselves. Watanabe and his team used animation, color, music, and sound effects to keep their powers distinct, although their appearances don’t necessarily reveal what they can do. Most just look like hand-carved theatrical masks with splashes of color. Peru carries an assortment with him in his large backpack. Whenever he puts one on, aspects of his body transform, and he wields those unique powers as needed.

Image: Crunchyroll

That versatility is essential because Peru is more craftsman than conventional superhero. He trained under legendary mask maker Gaston Lou, one of the world’s three great mask makers. The most dangerous mask of all is the sentient Mask of the War God, which once took control of Peru and caused him to kill his master and fellow apprentices. That tragedy inspired him to hunt down and destroy every mask his master created. Rather than hide from that grim history, the anime filters its story through Peru’s guilt.

“I designed the show so the story always moves forward from Peru’s point of view, so the audience can empathize with him as much as possible,” Watanabe says. “Beyond that, I am conscious of conveying his appeal as a character through how cool and satisfying it is to watch him fight his way out of a tight spot as a ‘mask maker,’ putting every kind of mask to use.”

That tension gives the masks more weight than a traditional assortment of superpowers. Some grant their wearers exactly the ability they desire. Others impose powers they never wanted and cannot easily escape. Watanabe points to Peru’s eventual traveling companion Mok, whose Mask of Smoke has permanently bonded to his face. Its power is useful, but the price is so severe that Mok wants nothing more than to remove it.

“That is a relationship you will not find anywhere but in this series,” Watanabe says, “and I think it works wonderfully.”

An obscure manga with ‘nowhere to go but up’

Image: Crunchyroll

Written by Dr.Poro and illustrated by Nabana Naba, The Vermilion Mask has been serialized in Young King OURs since 2021. That places it outside the three major manga magazines: Weekly Shonen Jump, Weekly Shonen Magazine, and Weekly Shonen Sunday. At the show’s August premiere at Otakon, Watanabe said Vermilion Mask’s relative obscurity was part of what attracted him to the adaptation.

“It is not a simple superpower battle series,” Watanabe reaffirms. “The story is very full and unpredictable, one surprise and thrill after another, along with a cast of compelling characters, the distinctive premise of the masks, and the whole world built around them.”

He believes those elements give the manga the potential to stand alongside titles from Japan’s largest magazines “without being outmatched.” At the same time, adapting a lesser-known work means the anime arrives without the kind of big expectations that often come attached to an established hit.

“Being relatively unknown means there are not many expectations attached to the series and that nobody has it marked as one to watch,” Watanabe says, “so the way I see it, there is nowhere to go but up.”

Watanabe is perhaps best-known for Blue Lock, which turns soccer into a high-octane experience for the viewer. The first season, which Watanabe directed, focuses on what each player wants and the split-second decisions that determine every play. Watanabe sees that attention to the characters’ beliefs as the common thread between his two projects.

Image: Crunchyroll

“Whether it is Blue Lock, The Vermilion Mask, or any other project, what I am always conscious of when making a show is depicting each character’s convictions properly,” he says. “That is what gives a character depth and lets you make them more appealing.”

This combination of sharply defined characters, bizarre powers, and comprehensible action makes The Vermilion Mask one of the fall’s most promising surprises. Its deliberately retro approach does not make it look antiquated. Instead, Watanabe hopes different generations will see something entirely different in it.

“Younger viewers may find it ‘new,' while older viewers may find it ‘somewhat nostalgic.’”

The Vermilion Mask premieres on Crunchyroll in October.