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Screenshot via Ezra Koenig/Twitter

Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig announces an anime series for Netflix

Jaden Smith, Jude Law, and the Kid Mero all star. You read that right.

 

Christine Friar

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Posted on Sep 6, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 6:19 pm CDT

Ready to play Millennial Mad Libs? Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig has teamed up with Jaden Smith, Jude Law, and the Kid Mero to make an anime series for Netflix. It’s called Neo Yokio, and according to Koenig it’s about “the greatest city in the world.”

Koenig announced the project Tuesday afternoon on Twitter by sharing screenshots from the show. As Stereogum points out, though, Jude Law actually mentioned Neo Yokio during a June 2016 interview, but no one knew what he was talking about at the time. Law said: “I think Jaden Smith is playing this little boy called Kai in it, and I’m his butler. I’m this kind of huge robot butler called Charles, who is also a rocket ship. And it takes place in a New York that is sort of combined with Tokyo in the future.”

The official Instagram account for the series launched with nine images that tile out to depict the futuristic city’s skyline. And there’s a little Easter egg, too: Each tile is a two-photo set, and the second image is actually a video clip from the series. In the videos, you get glimpses of what the show might look and feel like—a jaded teen sitting on a bench while a tennis ball gets hit back and forth, a TV commercial from the Board of Tourism, people floating around in bubbles in “the sea beneath 14th street.” It looks… tight.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYorDXIBj0W/?taken-by=neoyokio

The Kid Mero (of Viceland’s Desus and Mero) confirmed his involvement in the project in a tweet.

“YEAH THATS RIGHT WE DOIN ANIME NOW,” he wrote Tuesday afternoon. “CATCH UP STAY TUNED DONT WATCH ME WATCH TV.”

It’s like celebrity weird Twitter got together and 420-created the ultimate TV pitch.

Neo Yokio is set to premiere on Netflix Sept. 22.

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*First Published: Sep 6, 2017, 11:40 am CDT