news culture Final Fantasy IX: the animated series inspired by Square’s RPG soon to be presented in Las Vegas?
Announced last June and immediately confirmed on Twitter by Sunil Godhania, head of social media at Square Enix, the animated series inspired by the Final Fantasy IX game universe is making headlines again. If all goes according to plan, we should get our very first glimpse of it at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this week.
The Licensing Expo is the largest event dedicated to brand licensing and extension. This 2022 edition will take place May 24-26 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Vegas with exhibitors covering a wide range of categories, including animated production. It is within the framework of this fair that Bruno Danzel d’AumontVice President of International Licensing and Marketing of Cyber Group Studiosspoke about the projects that will be unveiled by their team on this occasion:
The Licensing Expo is a global trade show, and as Cyber Group Studios sells its series globally, it’s a great opportunity to meet with our existing partners and potential future partners to share the latest updates from the company. For example, we recently invested in real-time animation, a new technology that allows us to produce high-quality content using live actors for a fraction of the cost of traditional animation. – Bruno Denzel d’Aumont (for Animation Magazine)
And among the series mentioned (gigantosaurus, Digital Girl, The McFire Family, Press Start!), there is one that particularly interests us. This is Final Fantasy IX…
The return of Final Fantasy IX in a new prologue?
The Final Fantasy IX animation series is therefore co-developed and co-produced with Square Enix by the Parisian studio Cyber Group Studios who will also take care of all the merchandising revolving around this production. The choice of this episode is far from being aberrant as Final Fantasy IX has made a lasting impression on players with the charisma of its protagonists and its sometimes theatrical, sometimes much more serious tone.. The idea of reconnecting with this gallery of iconic characters is therefore something really exciting.
This is obviously not the first time that Square Enix has taken the risk of transposing its Final Fantasy role-playing game license into animation (Final Fantasy: Legends of the Crystals, Final Fantasy VII: Last Order, Final Fantasy XV: Brotherhood) but the event marks above all the great return of Final Fantasy IX to the front of the stage, an episode particularly dear to players of the Playstation era. If the fans will probably not miss this event for anything in the world, our concern still concerns the direction that this series could take, which we are told thatit will target children aged 8 to 13. Knowing that the game in 2001 in our country, those who had discovered it at the time will therefore perhaps not find themselves there …. Let’s not forget that the character design of Final Fantasy IX precisely contains a more adult than the software at first glance suggests. Nevertheless the series should be based on the unpublished by telling us about events prior to the start of the gamewhich would greatly increase its interest.
