#Video Game Anime Comes to Netflix – /Film

The popular DOTA 2 video-game franchise by Valve is becoming an anime series. Netflix’s DOTA: Dragon’s Blood adapts the beloved video game that started off as an unlikely Warcraft III mod, before Valve would trademark the name and launch the wildly successful DOTA 2. Watch the DOTA: Dragon’s Blood trailer below.

DOTA Dragon’s Blood Trailer

The eight-episode DOTA: Dragon’s Blood “tells the story of Davion, a renowned Dragon Knight devoted to wiping the scourge from the face of the world. Following encounters with a powerful, ancient eldwurm as well as the noble Princess Mirana on a secret mission of her own, Davion becomes embroiled in events much larger than he could have ever imagined.” It’s all very swords-and-sorcery high fantasy, which we can see in spades in the official trailer, as well as the blood and gore which earns DOTA: Dragon’s Blood its “adult anime” designation. There’s also plenty of dragon blood, to live up to the show’s title.

Studio MIR, the studio behind The Legend of Korra and Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender, animates the new Netflix original anime, which you can only really loosely define as an anime — like many of Netflix’s other releases under that medium, DOTA: Dragon’s Blood comes from a largely Western production team, with Ashley Edward Miller (X-Men: First Class, Thor, Black Sails) serving as series showrunner and executive producer. Studio Mir’s Ryu Ki Hyun also serves as co-executive producer.

Defense of the Ancients was released in 2003 as a World of Warcraft mod that would serve as inspiration for the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) genre, eventually launching as its own independent franchise with Valve’s DOTA 2, a sequel released in 2013. DOTA 2 was met with near-universal acclaim from critics, and has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Hopefully the new Netflix anime will live up to the acclaim around the video game.

Here is the synopsis for DOTA: Dragon’s Blood:

The upcoming fantasy series tells the story of Davion, a renowned Dragon Knight devoted to wiping the scourge from the face of the world. Following encounters with a powerful, ancient eldwurm as well as the noble Princess Mirana on a secret mission of her own, Davion becomes embroiled in events much larger than he could have ever imagined. The series is based on the hugely successful global video-game franchise DOTA 2 by Valve.

DOTA: Dragon’s Blood is set to launch globally on March 25. See the new DOTA: Dragon’s Blood character posters below.

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