Gannibal

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Based on Masaaki Ninomiya's manga of the same name, this Disney+ Japanese original series follows a police officer who is posted as the resident officer of a mountain village rumored to be a place where "people get eaten," and who draws closer to the secrets of the clan that holds sway over the village.

Made as a Japanese original series under Disney+'s Star brand, season 1 consists of 7 episodes: episodes 1 and 2 were released together on December 28, 2022, followed by one episode each Wednesday. Episode lengths vary, and the final episode, 7, runs over an hour. In Korea, Disney+ lists it under the Korean title 간니발 (Gannibal). Ahead of its official release, it was selected for the TIFF Series section of the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival, where episodes 1 and 2 had their world premiere on November 1, 2022. The source is a manga that Masaaki Ninomiya serialized in Nihon Bungeisha's Weekly Manga Goraku from 2018 to 2021, completed in 13 volumes. The manga's cumulative circulation was reported as over 2.1 million copies in December 2022, around the time of the drama's release, and over 3.5 million copies in September 2023, when production of season 2 was announced. Season 2 (8 episodes), which continues the story, began streaming on March 19, 2025.

The series is directed by Shinzo Katayama, who made his feature debut with Siblings of the Cape and went on to direct Missing (2022), with Hayato Kawai co-directing episodes 4–6. Katayama worked as an assistant director on Bong Joon-ho's segment "Shaking Tokyo" in the omnibus film Tokyo! (2008) and on Mother (2009). This is both his first live-action adaptation of a manga and his first streaming drama. The screenplay was written by Takamasa Oe. For the screenplay of Drive My Car (2021), co-written with Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Oe shared the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, a first for a Japanese film, and the two were also nominated together for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The producers are Teruhisa Yamamoto of Drive My Car and Tatsuya Iwakura of the Ushijima the Loan Shark series. The project began when Iwakura, of SDP, which took part in the production, pitched it to Disney's local content production team, and it was produced by Yamamoto, who handles the planning and production of Japanese original content at Walt Disney Japan. Filming lasted nearly five months. Katayama said that because it is a story in which terrifying things happen amid Japan's beautiful scenery, he took particular care in choosing the locations. Before filming, the cast also held rehearsals without a script, with only the premises decided, acting out the characters' relationships in a period before the events of the series.

Yuya Yagira plays Daigo Agawa, a police officer who, following a certain incident, is demoted to resident officer in the mountain village of Kuge. Riho Yoshioka plays his wife, Yuki, and Kokone Shimizu plays their daughter, Mashiro, who has lost the ability to speak and to smile since that incident. Yoshioka and Yagira appear together for the first time in about 6 years, since the drama We're Millennials. Got a Problem? (2016). Kuge is a village that lives off cypress forestry, and the Goto family, which owns most of the village's land, controls all of that work. Show Kasamatsu plays Keisuke, the Goto family's next head, who upholds the village's age-old rules, and Mitsuko Baisho plays Gin, Keisuke's grandmother, who had been the head of the family. Seiji Rokkaku (Keisuke's father and the village chief, Kiyoshi), Rairu Sugita (Keisuke's younger brother, Yosuke), Mitsuo Yoshihara (his former classmate Iwao) and Yoshi Sako (Mutsuo) play members of the Goto family. Baijaku Nakamura plays Sabu, the leader of the villagers who warmly welcome Daigo's family, and Kana Kita plays Sumire Kano, daughter of the previous resident officer, who went missing before Daigo arrived. In episode 1, while examining Gin's body, found in the forest, Daigo raises questions about human bite marks left on her arm, and the Goto family reacts with fierce hostility. In episode 2, after coming across Gin's funeral procession, Daigo hears rumors about the Goto family and visits them to look into what became of the previous officer.

At a stage appearance at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Shinzo Katayama said that reading the manga, he felt it depicted something like a clash of civilizations, and that although the events take place in one village, they could happen anywhere in the world. At a press conference held during Disney's content showcase in Singapore in December 2022, he explained that what sets the series apart from other thrillers is that the events unfold in an enclosed space cut off from other areas. At the same event, Yuya Yagira explained why he joined the project: in addition to the appeal of the manga, he was glad to take part in director Katayama's world, and above all he was intrigued that Disney+ would make a series out of such material. Riho Yoshioka said that during filming she held on to the story's foundation as a tale of a family's renewal. Shortly after the release, directors Isshin Inudo, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike and Yeon Sang-ho issued comments recommending the series. Disney said that in its first month after release, the series was the most-watched Japanese-produced original drama series on Disney+ in Japan, based on hours streamed, and Yagira received the Asian Excellence Award at the Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards held in Busan in October 2023.

See alsoSiblings of the Cape 2019Missing 2022Drive My Car 2021Land of Tanabata 2024Because We Forget Everything 2022

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: animenewsnetwork.com, eiga.com, disneyplus.com, realsound.jp, nippon.com, cinemacafe.net, nocutnews.co.kr, press.moviewalker.jp · 2026-10-14