On April Fool’s Day, GONZO released a trailer for a new Kaleido Star anime titled Shin Kaleido Star. While that anime was just an April Fool’s joke, the trailer’s reception has led to GONZO announcing a proper list of future goals it has in mind for the 2003 series.
These goals include a rebroadcast with accompanying new visuals, the recording of a new radio program called Shin no Sugoraji (Sugoraji is the abbreviated name of the original Internet Radio Kaleid Star: Sora to Layla no Sugoi radio program), reading events, and a nationwide tour.
There is also the intention to create an official Kaleido Star doujinshi and the big and distant dream of producing a new Kaleido Star anime.
To kick things off, GONZO will “relaunch” the anime’s official X (formerly Twitter) account.
In its announcement, GONZO said, “Many of you have expressed that you don’t want this to be just an April Fool’s joke and hope for something new, which deeply moves us. Even after 20 years, your love for ‘Kaleido Star’ fills us with gratitude.
“Though it wasn’t a huge hit, to us, it’s an ‘irreplaceable masterpiece.’ We aim to take the next step with you. Creating something new is challenging with many hurdles, but if that’s your wish, we want to try. Like Sora, we hope to take small steps toward big dreams.”
Kaleido Star ran for two seasons and had 51 episodes in total. There were also some OVAs. The series was created and directed by Junichi Sato (Hugtto Precure co-series director, Sailor Moon series director). Hajime Watanabe (Captain Tsubasa 2018) and Fumitoshi Oizaki (Deaimon director) designed the characters.
Crunchyroll describes the premise as:
The director of Sailor Moon and Princess Tutu brings fans this breathtaking story of a young girl determined to follow her dreams all the way to the top! Sora—an amazing acrobat from Japan—left her family behind and moved to California to audition for a role in Kaleido Stage: a world-famous troop of performers is known for their death-defying stunts and spectacularly sparkling costumes!
At the start of 2025, GONZO announced that two new TV series were in development and will premiere in 2025 and 2026. The previous year, Variety reported that GONZO was working with “afro-anime”-focused multimedia company N LITE and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse co-director Peter Ramsey on a “live-action/anime hybrid feature” and an anime series.
GONZO’s TV anime output fell off after 2019, outside of the 2020 second season of 7SEEDS that was co-produced with Studio KAI. In 2021, it announced the SAMURAI cryptos NFT project.
Source: @GonzoAnimeIntl
