Hideo Kojima Drops First Look at Death Stranding Anime — And the Subtitle Is Wild

I did not have Kojima making an anime called Mosquito on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are. We just got the first look at his Death Stranding animated film during Kojima Productions' 10th anniversary livestream, the very on-brand-titled From Beyond the Strand, and yes, it is as strange as you were hoping.

First look: tentacles, Timefall, and a very bad day

Kojima rolled out two short clips. Both revolve around a man with a slimy, tentacle-like appendage covering his nose and mouth. It is... not subtle.

• Clip 1: He is fully submerged, face-tentacle and all, drifting through dark water. He swims toward a human-shaped presence, but the footage cuts before we get answers.
• Clip 2: Same guy on land, caught in Timefall (the series' signature time-warping rain). He ends up protecting some creepy, tar-like creatures — which look made of the same stuff as his face appendage — from someone wearing a porter suit. Mid-fight, his squirmy add-on vanishes. Make of that what you will.

So why 'Mosquito'?

Kojima and the anime's director, Hiroshi Miyamoto, chatted a bit after the tease and explained the working title points to the lead character using that slimy apparatus to suck something. It is not blood — which is exactly what you would expect — but the implication is very much there. Peak Kojima misdirection.

How they are making it

Inside baseball alert: the team said the animation is being hand-drawn first, then digitally assembled. That is an old-school-meets-new-school pipeline that tends to give anime a tactile feel without ditching modern compositing. Also in the creative mix: Aaron Guzikowski (Raised by Wolves) is writing the scenario script.

Meanwhile, the live-action movie

This is not the only Death Stranding adaptation cooking. A24 is producing a separate live-action film. Kojima says he will not be heavily involved in that one. Writer-director Michael Sarnoski had the high-level mission statement:

"We really want to capture the soul of the game."

Release timing

No date yet for the anime — which they are currently calling Mosquito, and yes, you will also see people refer to it as Death Stranding: Mosquito. As soon as there is a timetable, I will have it. Until then, consider me both fascinated and slightly grossed out, which is exactly the vibe this franchise likes to live in.