Code Geass: Star Chaser Aspal casts Ivan Shibata as a slave boy in a Roman Empire setting, with screenings touring Japan from January 2027
Sunrise's next Code Geass series named its two leads on November 5: Ivan Shibata as Aspal and Hibiku Yamamura as Zoé, a woman who lives as only a head. Kazuya Nomura directs; event screenings in five Japanese cities start in January 2027.
The year is 606 of the Divine Era, and the Roman Empire is bleeding its people dry under Emperor Phokas while fighting one border war after another. That is the backdrop the official site gave on November 5 for Code Geass: Hoshi Oi no Aspal, released in English as Code Geass: Star Chaser Aspal, alongside its main visual and first two cast members.
In the imperial capital Neapolis, a slave boy named Aspal who remembers nothing of his past crosses paths with Zoé, a woman whose whole existence is a head without a body. Their meeting is where the story starts.
The two leads
Ivan Shibata, whom MyAnimeList lists among the cast of Kaiju No. 8, voices Aspal. Hibiku Yamamura (Pon no Michi) plays Zoé.
Old hands and new ones
Sunrise is both the originator and the animation studio, with Bandai Namco Filmworks credited for production. The story concept comes from Ichiro Okouchi and Goro Taniguchi, the writer and director of the original 2006 series, which Anime Corner notes also had character designs by CLAMP.
The day-to-day team is different. Kazuya Nomura, director of Moriarty the Patriot, takes the director's chair, and Mado Nozaki, who wrote the screenplay for the film Hello World, handles series composition. Rolua designs the characters, Yoshi. designs the Agalmata, and Taro Iwashiro, composer for Seikaisuru Kado, writes the music. Further down the credits are assistant director Shinnosuke Itou, an episode director on Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX; art director Yoshio Tanioka from Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War; and sound director Kisuke Koizumi, with dugout on sound production.
Screenings before any broadcast
The series is slated for 2027, but Japanese audiences can see it early. Advance event screenings, meaning limited theatrical showings, will tour five major cities in Japan starting in January 2027. Neither the cities, the dates nor any TV or streaming plan has been named yet.
Twenty years of Geass
Aspal is the newest branch of a franchise that began with Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, a 25-episode series first broadcast in fall 2006, followed by R2 in spring 2008. A trilogy of recap films came out in 2017 and 2018, the sequel film Lelouch of the Re;surrection opened in February 2019, and Rozé of the Recapture followed in 2024.
