Adult Swim's animated adaptation of Anthony Bourdain's graphic novel series is locked in, with a new trailer and a hard premiere date now on the books.
Get Jiro, a half-hour action anime set in a near-future Los Angeles where chefs rule as gangsters, is scheduled to debut Oct. 3 at midnight on the Toonami block. Streaming on HBO Max follows a day later.
A new trailer for the series reveals the ultra-violent reality of chefs, who chop off heads and stomp on the faces of their enemies. The series imagines a Los Angeles where every physical experience — travel, entertainment, intimacy — has been digitized, leaving food and taste as the last irreplaceable pleasures. Chefs have seized that vacuum and become the city's most dangerous power brokers.
Into that world lands Jiro, a quiet, revenge-driven sushi chef running his restaurant out of a strip mall, who begins playing the city's warring culinary factions against one another.
Brian Tee, best known for Chicago Med, voices Jiro. The supporting cast includes Titus Welliver (Bosch: Legacy), Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and Justin Kirk (Weeds).
The show adapts the New York Times bestselling DC/Vertigo graphic novels Bourdain co-wrote with Joel Rose, illustrated by Langdon Foss and Alé Garza. The first volume, Get Jiro!, arrived in 2012; its sequel, Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, followed in 2015. To keep Bourdain's voice intact, the production enlisted Matt Goulding, a close collaborator and co-founder of the food and travel outlet Roads & Kingdoms, as a script and animation consultant.
Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen framed the series as a natural fit for the network in a statement. "Like everything Bourdain did, this story starts with food and then generously reaches out into all directions to cover culture, obsession and what makes humanity problematic but, in the end, inspiring,"
The series is produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios, with Tanaka, Brian Gatewood, Jordan Blum, and Sam Register serving as executive producers.
