Today “a masterpiece that will go down in history” arrives on Netflix, thanks to an original approach to a unique science fiction story

Netflix just released ‘Glimpses of tomorrow’the first series that Kyoto Animation produces exclusively for the platform, and it does so with a certainly tragic background: almost eight years have passed since the studio confirmed the adaptation. A year after the announcement, a man entered the studio offices with gasoline and set the building on fire. 36 people died and another 32 were injured. The author was sentenced to death in 2024, and the attack destroyed much of the studio’s materials and equipment, and with them, any progress that existed on the project.

In any case, the series has survived the tragedy, and it imagines a Kyoto of 1907 where electricity was never developed and steam became the dominant technology, leaving the city permanently covered in smoke. As a child, the protagonist invented projects that he captured in a notebook called the Electrical Catalog of the 20th Century, together with his older brother. He took that notebook to the war and never returned. The protagonist, now an adult and in the company of a young woman who is trying to escape an arranged marriage, will embark on a search for the treasure of his childhood.

Minoru Ōta directs the series in his first project as a director. He had previously worked as a key animator on ‘Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!’ and ‘Liz and the Blue Bird’, and as episode director on ‘Kobayashi-san’s Dragon Maid’. It is he himself who said that “‘Flashes of Tomorrow’ is a work that will remain engraved in the history of anime“. An unusual statement coming from someone directing his first project.

But the truth is that the series is raising expectations: before reaching Netflix, a tour of cinema screenings was held in Japan, the United Kingdom, Thailand and North America that started on June 14, in addition to a screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. All of this is part of the effort that Netflix is ​​making to include more anime in its programming: it has announced eight series and three movies for 2026 in Japan.

In Xataka | Today the best science fiction series of the moment returns, with a twist in its story that has given it a perfect score