Satria- The Warriors of 7 Elements

To all Malaysian Anime fans!! Rejoice, cause this is the one thing that we have been waiting till this day. Finally, Malaysia got its first actual anime production, which is a collaboration with Malaysia's animation team, Funcel, together with Malaysia's Film Development Corperation(FINAS) and one of Japan's animation producers, Hiroyuki Kitakubo of Gonzo Studio! Read on for more!

The Japanese animation studio, Gonzo had sign a deal with Malaysian animation studio, Funcel along with FINAS, a government organization that is involve in the filming industry to produced an anime-esque animated series, Satria- The Warriors of 7 Elements. The animated series will premiere Fall of 2012, which is presumably around March 2012. The 24-26 minutes episode plot will partake in the south eastern history, with added fiction portions of the story.

Here's the montage opening that was uploaded on Youtube,

The said history is the great legendary Hero of the Malaccan Sultan era of the 15th century, Hang Tuah(pronounced as Han Towa in Japanese). Other renown historical characters that will appear in the series are, the 4 closest friends of Hang Tuah, namely, Jebat, Lekiu, Lekir and Kasturi, the 2 Chinese historians that were greatly involved in the history of Malacca is Princess Hang Li Po and Admiral Cheng Ho. 2 Additional characters that will later join Hang Tuah and friends, that form the team of 7 elemental warriors are namely, Teja and Putri.

Here's the trailer for the animated series,

So, expect the anime to be dubbed in English, and there's a chance that it'll be released in Japanese Dub as well.

The animated series will be aimed at children of age 9 to 14. Hiroyuki Kitakubo of Gonzo Studio will be taking charge as an advisor to the production team of the animated series.

He was originally credited as a director, but request the removal of C21Media's listing of him as director. He claimed that he was there as an advisor to the production team. Kitokubo had also earlier posted on twitter(dated 1st of September) and said said that 22 of the 26 episodes for the Malaysian government were subcontracted to China for 2 million yen (about US$24,000) each. Presumably, the fact that they need to do that due to the involvement of 2 great Chinese Historical characters, namely Princess Hang Li Po and Admiral Cheng Ho.

*Words from writer: Well, I personally was one of those anime-fans that demanded for a Malaysian anime-esque animated series. And was hoping that some other locally renown comic company might get involve. I was never expecting Funcel to pull such moves in making a deal with Gonzo(which produces a number of my favorite animes). So, it was quite exciting, and it make me proud to be a Malaysian. ^^

Source: ANN