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A new TV anime based on the smartphone action RPG Monster Strike, titled Mera x Death: The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love, begins broadcasting on Tuesday, January 5, 2027. It will air on TOKYO MX and nine other terrestrial stations (10 total, planned), with streaming on various video services also lined up. A key visual and a PV dropped at the same time.
And that PV is anything but calm. It opens dressed up as a boy-meets-girl story, and then the heroine mutters “I’ll kill you.” The official tagline is “First love came to kill me.” This is something wearing a romantic-comedy skin, and the production makes sure everyone can see it.
Anime built on Monster Strike has, up to now, mostly meant theatrical films and web anime stacking up fairly straightforward hot-blooded battle stories. And then along comes “The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love.” The intent to change direction is clear from the title alone.
Back when I worked night shifts at a manga cafe in Kabukicho, the stuff that got dragged in after midnight was always this kind of thing: an unsettling story that starts with a sweet face. …Going by instincts from those days, this type of show usually changes its expression around episode 3. With more than a year to go until broadcast, let’s lay out everything we know right now.
- Premieres Tuesday, January 5, 2027, on TOKYO MX and nine other terrestrial stations (planned)
- The tagline is “First love came to kill me”
- Kenta Kushiya directs; Qzil.la and studio keel handle production
- An unusually dark direction for a Monster Strike anime
- The voice cast is unannounced as of this writing
Let’s nail down the broadcast date and where you can watch it first.
When does Mera x Death: The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love air, and where can you watch it?
The premiere is Tuesday, January 5, 2027, launching as part of the Winter 2027 anime season. TOKYO MX leads a lineup of 10 terrestrial stations (planned), and streaming across various video services is also on the schedule.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Title | Mera x Death: The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love |
| Premiere | Tuesday, January 5, 2027 |
| Stations | TOKYO MX and nine other terrestrial stations (10 total, planned) |
| Streaming | Planned across various video streaming services |
| Source material | Monster Strike (MIXI) |
| Tagline | First love came to kill me |
The number worth holding onto here is “10 terrestrial stations, planned.” Most Monster Strike anime projects so far have been built around YouTube distribution, so putting a show on 10 stations in a broadcast season is a serious investment. It’s effectively a declaration that this is a one-cour late-night swing for the fences.
What’s the story? What “First love came to kill me” actually means
A boy named Mera meets a mysterious girl named Thirteen – that’s the starting point of the story. The title “Mera x Death” reads as a mash-up of those two names.
The PV that went live opens pastorally enough, playing as a story about two people meeting. Then, partway through, Thirteen says “I’ll kill you.” The whole thing is structured so the air changes right there. Just as Anime!Anime! reported it, calling it “an unsettling PV in which the heroine mutters ‘I’ll kill you,'” the footage itself is designed to deceive the viewer.
The subtitle, “The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love,” is equally blunt. Thirteen belongs to the reaper side, and the romance is labeled “abnormal” from the very start. In other words, there’s a strong chance this show builds a boy-meets-girl structure specifically so it can break it.
With this kind of sweet-then-inverted setup, the deciding factor isn’t the inversion itself but how much of the characters’ emotions the show can pick up afterward. If the only trick is shocking you with the drop, it burns through that in episode 1. To carry a full cour, the make-or-break question has to be how Mera behaves once he learns what Thirteen really is.
Who’s on the production staff?
Here’s the staff announced so far.
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Director | Kenta Kushiya |
| Series composition and script | Daisuke Daito |
| Character design | Tadashi Sakazaki |
| Animation production | Qzil.la, studio keel |
The production setup is what deserves attention. This is a two-studio effort between Qzil.la and studio keel. Qzil.la has been increasing its involvement in original projects in recent years, and listing it alongside studio keel signals either co-production or a split workload. Lining up two studios on a single-cour show reads as a decision that takes schedule security very seriously.
It’s also worth noting that Daisuke Daito is handling series composition and scripts solo. On a show built around an inversion, running multiple writers in parallel tends to produce tonal wobble. If one person carries it all the way through, the show’s temperature should hold to the end.
What makes this unusual for a Monster Strike anime?
To put the conclusion first: what’s unusual is that it steps away from bringing the source game’s visual identity along with it.
Monster Strike is an action RPG whose selling point is the satisfying pull-and-fling, and the standard playbook for adapting it has been to push that battle element front and center. This time, though, the chosen subject matter – a grim reaper and an “abnormal love” – has no direct line to the game’s core mechanics. The tagline doesn’t so much as hint at battles.
That’s a choice with risk attached. Existing players who tune in expecting “Monster Strike-ness” may well feel let down. On the other hand, it dramatically widens the opening to pull in late-night anime viewers who have never touched the game. Given the scale of a 10-station rollout, the target is obviously the latter group.
When I brought this up with my skate buddies, the response was, “Wait, Monster Strike is still making anime?” …If you think of this as a project designed to reach exactly those people, it tracks. Moving an existing IP into a different genre’s container is also the single most efficient play there is – when it lands.
When will the voice cast be announced? What we know right now
As of this writing (September 28, 2026), no cast has been announced. Neither Mera nor Thirteen has a voice actor attached. I’m not going to throw out names on speculation.
There’s been no official word on announcement timing, either. That said, with a January 5, 2027 premiere, the usual pattern puts a first wave of cast reveals three to four months out – meaning somewhere between fall and winter 2026. The safest bet for follow-up news is the official site and the official X (formerly Twitter) account.
What’s locked in at this point is the broadcast date, the broadcast scale, the main staff, the tagline, and the existence of a PV and key visual. That’s where I’ll honestly draw the line.
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Summary: Mera x Death opens January 5, 2027, and it’s Monster Strike’s new gamble
Here’s the confirmed information one more time.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Title | Mera x Death: The Grim Reaper and My Abnormal Love |
| Premiere | Tuesday, January 5, 2027 |
| Broadcast and streaming | TOKYO MX and nine other terrestrial stations (10 total, planned) / various streaming services |
| Director | Kenta Kushiya |
| Series composition and script | Daisuke Daito |
| Character design | Tadashi Sakazaki |
| Animation production | Qzil.la, studio keel |
| Voice cast | Unannounced (as of September 28, 2026) |
Mera the protagonist, Thirteen the mysterious girl, and that tagline: “First love came to kill me.” How long can a structure that raises a boy-meets-girl story just to invert it hold up across a full cour? That’s where this show lives or dies.
Monster Strike, a colossal IP, has been poured into the container of an “abnormal love” story instead of a battle series. It’s swinging for a full cour across 10 terrestrial stations while refusing to put the source game’s core mechanics up front. This is a stance that knowingly risks losing part of the existing player base in order to go after new late-night anime viewers. Qzil.la and studio keel share production duties, with Daisuke Daito writing the series solo. Whether an inversion story works comes down not to the drop itself but to the emotional writing that follows it – and choosing to run that through a single writer is, at minimum, a sound piece of design.
The cast is unannounced. The pieces you need to judge this won’t be in place until fall or winter. Go watch that PV one more time, all the way to the end.
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* Broadcast date, stations and staff information are as of September 28, 2026, confirmed via official announcements and reporting from various outlets. The voice cast was unannounced as of that same date.
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