Attack on Titan studio's risky new sci-fi anime LONA has 3 Body Problem vibes

LONA looks to be another ambitious swing from WIT Studio

Every new anime season brings another wave of adaptations. Hit manga become television events, light novels become the next isekai obsession, and video games like Death Stranding and Sekiro continue making the leap to animation. Original anime, meanwhile, have quietly become something of a rarity, especially on the scale of a prestige production. WIT Studio is no different. Producing anime of the biggest franchises in the medium, including Vinland Saga, Attack on Titan, and even the upcoming One Piece remake, the studio can similarly fall prey to the industry’s obsession with adaptations. But its next project looks like something entirely new.

Set to premiere in spring 2027, LONA — that’s “Laboratory of Optics and Neural Analysis” — centers on a team of researchers investigating the thoughts of the dead after a string of attacks committed by people who shouldn't be alive. It's a wonderfully unsettling hook that separates LONA from the sea of fantasy adventures (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Sentenced to be a Hero) and cyberpunk thrillers (The Ghost in the Shell, Psycho Pass) dominating anime. Rather than asking what happens when machines become human, LONA appears more interested in consciousness itself. If memories can survive death, what does that mean for science at large and the ethics behind studying this phenomenon? What does this say about the concept of a soul?

These sorts of questions seemingly allow LONA to interrogate heady philosophical questions through the lens of neuroscience, something you really don’t see explored in anime all that often. While it focuses on hard science, the vibes lean philosophical and even metaphysical — sort of like a collision between Neon Genesis Evangelion and 3 Body Problem without aliens or big robots. Science fiction anime has long been fascinated by artificial intelligence and dystopian futures, but stories built around the mysteries of the brain remain surprisingly uncommon. LONA seems less interested in futuristic gadgets and more interested in the frightening implications of consciousness and identity, giving its mystery the feel of speculative science rather than technological fantasy.

Visually, it's exactly what you'd hope from a WIT Studio project. The first footage of LONA, released June 28, is packed with cinematic lighting, richly detailed environments, nuanced character acting, mature color psychology, and the kind of meticulous animation that has become synonymous with the studio's biggest productions. Every shot communicates scale without feeling ostentatious, using atmosphere as effectively as spectacle. The trailer feels like WIT reminding audiences why it's still one of anime's premier visual storytellers. Even the posters for the show look incredible, highlighting LONA's unique blend of colors, wild camera angles, intriguing characters, and CERN-like setting.

The studio has earned that reputation over the past decade through series like Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Ranking of Kings, and its work on Spy x Family, which it co-animates with CloverWorks (Bocchi the Rock!, My Dress-Up Darling). Those projects helped establish WIT as one of the industry's most reliable names for ambitious adaptations, but they're only part of the studio's identity. WIT has also invested in original projects, continuing to pursue new ideas even as much of the anime industry becomes increasingly reliant on recognizable intellectual property.

That makes LONA feel less like an exception and more like a statement. While many studios prioritize adaptations with built-in audiences, WIT continues carving out space for stories that have to earn their audience from scratch, exemplified by Bubble, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Great Pretender, and Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song, the latter of which LONA director Takashi Katagiri also worked on. It's always a risk producing an original property, but it's also one of the reasons WIT Studio remains so creatively interesting.

The creative team on LONA reinforces that philosophy. Original story and screenplay duties fall to Akiko Nogi, whose career has been defined more by acclaimed live-action TV dramas than anime, such as The Diamond Sleeping Sea (2024) and Fence (2023). Her screenplay for Inu-Oh proved she could translate that sensibility into animation without losing the emotional precision that made her live-action work stand out. LONA looks poised to push that even further, pairing grounded dramatic instincts with an ambitious sci-fi premise. Katagiri, best known for Spy x Family Code: White, will be directing the series. While still early in his career, his Spy x Family film demonstrated a confident grasp of cinematic animation. An original series like LONA gives him the opportunity to define a visual language from the ground up instead of inheriting one from an existing franchise.

WIT Studio's LONA isn't just another gorgeous series from one of anime's most respected studios, but a reminder that some of the medium's biggest creative swings still come from stories nobody has heard before. That's part of what makes it feel so refreshing. Nobody knows where this story could be headed. There isn't a bestselling manga readers can study, no pre-existing mythology to faithfully recreate, and no online discourse already spoiling every major twist. At a time when anime is increasingly built around familiar names and proven successes, WIT Studio is betting on an entirely original neuroscience mystery with blockbuster production value. If its ideas prove as compelling as its visuals, LONA won't just be one of spring 2027's most exciting anime, but proof there's still room for the industry's biggest studios to surprise us.