Why Does ‘High School DxD Hero’ Look Different?

The long-awaited fourth season of High School DxD has premiered to much fan hype, but fans have also noticed that the series has undergone a major visual overhaul for the fourth season.

But why is this? For fans that do not know, High School DxD Hero is actually being handled by a new animation studio, Passione, leading to character art with less rough edges.

The fourth season premiere took fans by surprise as not only the series re-introduced events from the previous seasons (as well as retcon how the Juggernaut Drive Issei was handled in the anime), but the characters all looked much different. Passione is an animation studio that has kicked into gear in the last few years, and its latest effort is High School DxD Hero.

Passione has previously worked on anime like Rail Wars!, Hinako Note, Citrus, and Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers. Fans are happy to see the series in the hands of a new studio, since the studio that worked on the previous three seasons of the series, TNK, has moved on to other anime productions like Doreiku.

The new art-style has been a big success with fans, as now they are excited to see the series’ previously introduced characters through this new lens. As High School DxD Hero is set to return to the series’ official canon after the third season ended with its own original story.

Although fans are not entirely too happy with the censored streams of the series available in the West, they are just happy to have one of their favorite series back on the air.

Yoshifuma Sueda (Rail Wars!, MAOYU) is directing the series for producer Passione (Rail Wars!, Hinako Note). Kenji Konuta (Blood Lad, Servamp) is composing the music for the series, and Mokoto Uno (The Qwasar of Stigmata, Rail Wars!, and Love Hina) will be designing the characters of the series. Minami will be performing the opening theme “Switch,” and the ending theme, “Motenai Kuseni” will be performed by Tapimiru.

If you are not familiar with High School DxD, then you should know the series is one rooted in supernatural adventures and gratuitous fan service. The story follows a boy named Issei Hyodo who is best known for his perverted ways. After being asked on a date, the boy is killed when the girl turns out to be a fallen angel. Issei is revived by a busty classmate of his named Rias who is a devil herself, and she contracts the boy to become her new pet as she reincarnated him into a devil during his resurrection.

Based off a series of light novels by Ichiei Ishibumi with illustrations provided by Miyama-Zero, the series began serialization in 2008 as part of Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Magazine. The series has since been collected into 22 volumes, and has spawned a manga adaptation as well. The manga has been handled by Hiroji Mishima starting in 2010, and has 22 volumes currently available as of 2006. The series has since spawned three anime series before, and were all licensed for an English language release by Funimation running from 2012 to 2015 in various intervals with the latest iteration of the series premiering later in 2018.