Production I.G and Namco have teamed up to produce a big screen anime version of the 2008 RPG video game Tales Of Vesperia: The First Strike. Vesperia is the latest in a long line of RPG games that began in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia for the SNES and includes Tales Of Symphonia. Production I.G has been producing the short animated movies featured in the games since the beginning.
The film will be directed by veteran animator Kanta Kamei the animator behind the Kill Bill animated sequences, and will be theatrically distributed in Japan by Kadokawa Pictures in 2009.
The game version of Tales of Vesperia was released in August 2008 for Xbox 360. The story takes place on the planet Terca Lumireis, where people rely on an ancient civilization's technology called blastia in order to power their cities and machinery or cast magic spells. However, two
factions are in conflict: the powerful Imperial Knights and the dissenting group known as the Guild. The story of the movie, will be set before the events narrated in the game.
