Tomb Raider King Anime Premieres July 8 With Korea in Charge

Tomb Raider King, the animated adaptation of SAN.G’s hit Korean web novel, premieres July 8 on Fuji TV’s late-night B8station block at 25:15 JST (Japan Standard Time), which the calendar reads as 1:15 a.m. on July 9, with a Crunchyroll stream to follow for overseas viewers. A world-premiere screening of the first two episodes runs June 13 at Tokyo’s Science Hall.

Most coverage files the show under one heading: the next Solo Leveling-style summer fantasy. The detail worth pausing on sits lower in the credits. The studio making it, Seoul’s EEK, is South Korean.

A July 8 Slot and a Tokyo Premiere First

The broadcast lands on Fuji TV’s B8station programming block, the same late-night anime real estate that has carried regression fantasies to overseas streamers for the past two years. Air time is 25:15 JST on July 8, which most of the world will see as 1:15 a.m. on July 9. Crunchyroll picks up the simulcast for audiences outside Japan.

Before any of that, there is the room in Tokyo. On June 13, the first two episodes screen at Science Hall, with a cast stage greeting that Kadokawa plans to livestream on its anime YouTube channel. Tickets put fans in front of the voice actors weeks ahead of the broadcast date.

The ordering is deliberate. A theatrical-style unveiling builds word of mouth inside the core fandom, then the television slot and the global Crunchyroll simulcast schedule converts that buzz into viewers.

Why Studio EEK’s Name on This Matters

Here is the shift hiding in plain sight. Studio EEK is based in Seoul, and its credits run through international work such as Netflix’s anthology LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS and the game-based series Game of Dice. This time the company has a Korean property being animated by a Korean house, with a Korean director steering the whole thing.

Seung Wook Woo, who holds episode-director credits on Hunter x Hunter, leads the project and oversees the scripts. The senior craft roles sit with Korean names too: Hyun-Jung Lee on character design and chief animation direction, Hyung Jun Heo as a second chief animation director, and Ju Young Kim on music.

For years the template ran the other way. A Korean webtoon would get optioned, then handed to a Japanese studio that supplied the animation, the directorial voice and most of the production muscle. Solo Leveling, the breakout that reset expectations for the entire category, was animated by Tokyo’s A-1 Pictures.

The new series keeps a Japanese broadcast slot and a Japanese-language cast, so the dependency has not vanished. What changed is who holds the pencils.

A Voice Cast Built for Japanese Living Rooms

The casting reads like a deliberate pitch to Japan’s living rooms, stacking the dub with names that anime regulars recognize on the first line of dialogue.

The dual naming is its own tell. The Japanese broadcast renames the Korean cast, turning Jooheon Suh into Ryoga Goriki, a localization choice that smooths the property into a domestic slot and signals how hard the producers are courting the home audience.

From Tapas Scroll to Broadcast Slot

The source is a regression fantasy with a long paper trail. SAN.G wrote the original web novel, the webtoon art comes from 3B2S, and the story adaptation is credited to Yuns at REDICE STUDIO. The plot drops a veteran tomb raider, Jooheon Suh, fifteen years into the past, before the relic-bearing tombs surfaced, and lets him weaponize what he already knows is coming.

English readers have had access for a while. the full Tomb Raider King webtoon on Tapas covers the digital run, while the Yen Press print edition under its Ize Press imprint has fourteen collected volumes out as of April.

The path from vertical-scroll panels to a 24-minute broadcast episode is not automatic. Pacing, color and sound have to be rebuilt from the ground up, and that is exactly the work the Seoul team has taken on.

1. June 2019: the webtoon launches on KakaoPage in Korea.
2. November 2022: Yen Press begins English print volumes through Ize Press.
3. June 13, 2026: the first two episodes screen at the Tokyo premiere.
4. July 8, 2026: the television broadcast begins, with Crunchyroll to follow.

The Manhwa Pipeline Behind the Premiere

This premiere does not arrive in a vacuum. It sits at the front of a backlog of webtoon adaptations that licensors have been racing to greenlight since one show proved the model.

Solo Leveling Cleared the Path

Solo Leveling did not just rate well. It won Anime of the Year at the 2025 Crunchyroll Awards, the first South Korea-rooted series to take the top prize. That result told rights holders the demand was global and durable, not a passing niche, and it sent buyers hunting for the next title with the same shape.

The Pledged Backlog

The commitments stacked up quickly after that.

• 20-plus new webtoon-based anime pledged by LINE Webtoon’s leadership for 2025 alone.
• 10 manhwa titles lined up under a Webtoon and Warner Bros. partnership.
• 14 volumes of the source manhwa already in print, a deep well for adapters to draw from.

Animation has rarely had more commercial pull behind it, with theatrical results like Disney’s record-setting Zootopia 2 box office run showing how high the ceiling sits for the format right now.

Who Holds the Pencils

This is where the new series breaks slightly from the pattern. Co-productions that blend Japanese studios with Korean IP are now common, and so are reboots that pick animation over live action, a calculation Nathan Fillion walked through for the Firefly animated revival. What is rarer is a Korean studio owning the directorial chair on a marquee adaptation rather than subcontracting the heavy lifting to Tokyo.

If the show draws the numbers Solo Leveling did, the open question stops being whether Korean webtoons make good anime and starts being who gets to animate the next dozen. If it stumbles, the safe money goes back to the Japanese studios that have been doing this work for decades.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the Tomb Raider King anime premiere?

The broadcast begins July 8 on Fuji TV’s B8station block at 25:15 JST, which falls at 1:15 a.m. on July 9. A world-premiere screening of the first two episodes runs earlier, on June 13 at Tokyo’s Science Hall.

Where can I watch Tomb Raider King?

Viewers in Japan can catch it on Fuji TV’s late-night block, while audiences outside Japan get it through Crunchyroll’s simulcast once the broadcast airs.

Who is producing the Tomb Raider King anime?

A South Korean studio in Seoul is producing it, with Seung Wook Woo directing and overseeing the scripts. The character design and chief animation direction sit with Hyun-Jung Lee, alongside chief animation director Hyung Jun Heo.

Is Tomb Raider King based on a webtoon?

Yes. It started as a Korean web novel by SAN.G, with webtoon art by 3B2S and story adaptation by Yuns at REDICE STUDIO. The webtoon first ran on KakaoPage from June 2019.

Where can I read the Tomb Raider King manhwa in English?

The digital webtoon is available on Tapas, and Yen Press publishes the collected print volumes under its Ize Press imprint, with fourteen volumes out as of April.