Le Collège Noir: the animation series produced by ADN, Toei and the La Cachette studio is revealed

The streaming platform ADN (Animation Digital Network) has just lifted the veil on its promising future production: The Black College, co-produced with Toei Animation and French studio La Cachette. A fantastic dive into the folklore of Cantal, scheduled for October 2023.

At the heart of the old legends of Auvergne

With The Black Collegeauthor and director Ulysse Malassagne (Love, Death and Robots, Primal) is adapting its own comic into a series comprising six 15-minute episodes, of which here is the official synopsis:

In a college lost in the middle of the Cantal mountains, five young college students spend the All Saints holidays under the supervision of Léna, a bad-tempered pioneer. But when the soul of their missing comrade appears to them in the middle of the night, the teenagers find themselves confronted with the curse of a terrible witch and the most terrifying creatures of French folklore.

A program at the crossroads of genres and inspirations, borrowing as much from the legends of Auvergne as from Japanese ghost stories: “I was fascinated by the idea of ​​doing with French folklore what Japanese artists do so well with their yokai stories. They have this habit of reintegrating them into their modern stories, whereas in France, we are in forgetting all our rural imagination. The Black College was born from this observation”says Ulysse Malassagne.

This collaboration between the ADN platform — broadcaster of Naruto, Hunter X Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh! —, the mythical Japanese studio Toei Animation (Grendizer, Dragon Ball, One Piece) and the French La Cachette, with such a particular aesthetic, looks promising. In addition, fantastic films and series based on French mythologies and folklore are far too rare not to tickle our curiosity.

Yosuke Asama, senior producer of Toei Animation, confirmed this ambition: “I am very happy to be able to work here in France with a company that has the same aspirations as Toei Animation. The Black College will undoubtedly be a work that will be included in the list of our most striking and entertaining works”.

Revealed by the short film An Old Demonvisible in the first season of Love, Death and Robots on Netflix, La Cachette has since established itself as one of the French animation studios to follow. Emmy Award winner for their work on the series Primalhe recently participated in the anthology Star Wars : Visions with the short film The dancing spyviewable on Disney+.

Series The Black College will be broadcast in October 2023 on the DNA streaming platform.