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John Wick is the franchise that refuses to die, even when its main character has. We’re getting spin-offs and sequels and even an anime prequel. We’re deeply excited to see that last one since John Wick already feels a bit like anime and it turns out the director of the current films loves anime enough to consider making it his second career.

Chad Stahelski started his career in Hollywood as a stunt director, but he is probably best known as the director of John Wick and its three sequels. In a recent interview, he talked about his love of anime and how he got to work with Shinichiro Watanabe on the action sequences in Lazarus. Beyond just allowing him to try his hand at a new medium, the John Wick director apparently wouldn’t mind making anime his full-time gig.

“You could do so much,” Stahelski explained when talking about how working in anime allowed him to do things that were physically impossible in live-action. “That’s the thing with anime. Look at the opening episode. You want me to run on a monorail, on drones? Of course! Like, fucking anime is incredible. If I could get away with it, having a career in anime as an action design guy wouldn’t be a bad gig.”

Ahead of the upcoming John Wick anime, this is the kind of enthusiasm we love to see. Even in a series as over-the-top as John Wick, the medium of animation opens up whole new possibilities.  We can only hope that the anime embraces the impossible to deliver something special and unexpected.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba
• 2025 is the year One Punch Man season 3 finally adapts the cosmically weird Monster Association Arc and I can't wait