Yesterday at Anime NYC, Wit Studio announced that a sequel to the 2020 anime Great Pretender is in the works and will arrive in 2024. MyAnimeList.net beat them to the punch by adding the new season to their site on Friday, discreetly breaking the news one day early by sending out an email to fans who had the first season of Great Pretender on their list. TOHO animation’s YouTube channel quietly dropped a teaser trailer even earlier than that, posting the 18-second clip on Tuesday, November 10th.
While the protagonist of the first season was Makoto Edamura, the sequel will focus on Dorothy: the ex-fiancée and partner-in-crime of Laurent Thierry, another main character from season 1. Dorothy was believed to be dead, but at the end of episode 23 we see her alive and living with amnesia in Taiwan. Dorothy is front-and-center of the promotional poster (see below), and while we can glimpse a tiny Makoto in the bottom right corner, Laurent is nowhere to be seen and neither are Abigail or Cynthia, who were also prominent characters in the first season. Whether this means that they will not make an appearance at all or that they simply didn’t make it onto the poster is currently unknown. The title of the sequel is Great Pretender razbliuto, which is a Russian word for the nostalgic feelings a person holds towards someone whom they used to love. Considering Laurent is her ex whom she no longer remembers, this title is most likely referring to their relationship, which suggests that we might see Laurent in one way or another.
While it is unclear if this new project will be a new season, an OVA, or a movie, it is slated to play in movie theaters in North America. This could mean that it is a film, or perhaps a collection of episodes small enough to be played in one movie-length sitting. But this is purely speculation and hopefully Wit Studio will clarify the type of media soon. Although season 1 was a Netflix original anime that aired in two cours (which Netflix mistakenly has listed as two separate seasons), razbliuto will stream on Crunchyroll instead.
Stay tuned for more updates! In the meantime, Great Pretender is currently available to watch exclusively on Netflix.
