Shenmue anime gets a faithful new trailer ahead of its February debut

The Shenmue anime has a new trailer, and before you ask, it does feature a forklift.

The bulk of the Shenmue anime trailer lays out the central conflict that drives our protagonist Ryo Hazuki's story: the promising young martial artist from Yokosuka, Japan returns home one day to witness his father's death at the hands of a man named Lan Di. From there, Ryo embarks on a quest to discover Lan Di's motives and eventually avenge his father.

However, he doesn't let his drive for vengeance throw off his life balance. The original game was known at least as much for its life simulation elements as for its unfolding family drama; the anime trailer sensibly doesn't spend too much time dwelling on Ryo's side hustle as a forklift operator or gravitational pull to the nearest arcade, but it does give them just enough of a nod.

It's not yet clear how much of the Shenmue saga - which now encompasses three main games - will be represented in this anime. If it keeps going, this may just end up being the way we finally see the conclusion to a story decades in the making.

See where Shenmue falls on our list of the best Dreamcast games of all time.

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar+.