Sparks of Tomorrow Kyoto Animation TV Anime Set for 2026

Kyoto Animation used its “Meet the Worlds of KyoAni” event on Saturday to confirm that its long planned adaptation of Hiro Yuki’s novel 20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku, or 20th Century Electricity Catalog, will arrive as a television anime in 2026. The project carries the Japanese title 20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku Eureka Evlika, with the romanization still unconfirmed, and the new trailer presents the English title Sparks of Tomorrow along with English subtitles.

Yuma Uchida voices Kihachi Sakamoto and Sora Amamiya plays Inako Momokawa. Minoru Ota steps into his first director role after key animation on Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! and Liz and the Blue Bird, and episode direction on CITY The Animation and Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S. Tatsuhiko Urahata is overseeing the scripts, Kohei Okamura serves as chief animation director and character designer, Takaaki Suzuki handles the world setting, and Hitomi Koto is writing the music.

This has been a long time coming. Kyoto Animation first announced the adaptation in July 2018. The source novel earned an honorable mention in the novel category at the 8th Kyoto Animation Awards in May 2017 and was the only entry to take home any prize that year. The studio’s KA Esuma Bunko label published the book in August 2018 with illustrations by Kazumi Ikeda and art and backgrounds by Momoka Nagatani.

The story unfolds in the summer of 1907, deep in the Meiji era. Inako Momokawa, a girl of fifteen, lives in the Fushimi area of Kyoto as the second daughter of a sake brewer. Nothing seems to go right for her, and her father scolds her daily, so she leans on her prayers for comfort. At Fushimi Inari shrine she crosses paths with a freewheeling young man named Kihachi Sakamoto, who shrugs off the gods and talks excitedly about the coming age of electricity.

When her father starts arranging a marriage entirely on his own, Inako nearly gives up, until Kihachi helps her admit that she wants to break away. The one way to halt the wedding is to track down an unusual book called the Electricity Catalog, a childhood prediction journal that Kihachi wrote and that his older brother Seiroku took and never returned. The two set off across Kyoto and Shiga prefectures to find it. Kyoto Animation has also opened an English website for the series.

My take: It moves me to see KyoAni return to a gentle period story like this, since their warm and careful style feels perfectly suited to a quiet tale about a girl finding her own voice.