To be more specific, Night Head 2041 is actually a remake of a remake: the 2006 anime is a retelling of the 1992 live-action TV drama Night Head. But since there isn’t much documentation on the original version other than that Night Head Genesis doesn’t change a whole lot from it, we can treat Night Head Genesis as the first version for our purposes.

In the 2006 anime, Naoto and Naoya Kirihara have psychic powers derived from tapping into the “unused” 70% of the human brain (a since-debunked idea that Night Head 2041 only vaguely alludes to). They go through the same backstory, but leave the isolated lab to live in a mostly normal present-day Japan and their greatest opponent is ARK, a shady organization that pursues the Kirihara brothers for their rare psychic abilities. Characters like the space and time transcending schoolgirl Shoko Futami and the troubled child Masayuki appear here in largely the same roles as they do in Night Head 2041. The general consensus is that this series has good bones, but its pacing issues and convoluted storyline kept it from achieving greatness.

For the Summer 2021 anime season, Shigogumi (a relatively young studio known for Etotama, Moyashimon, and a few Doraemon movies) teamed up with original Night Head TV drama creator George Iida to reimagine the Night Head universe as a proper dystopian sci-fi with an additional set of brothers who both oppose the Kiriharas and share some unknown connection with them. So far at least, this approach seems to be working wonders. While the 2D/3D hybrid animation style can occasionally be jarring and there are perhaps too many characters to keep track of, turning the world into a 1984-esque hellscape where fiction and religion are considered thought crimes is a perfect way to raise the stakes. The Kuroki brothers have a lot to add to the story as well, struggling to rationalize their positions within an anti-thought-crime police force with their own burgeoning psychic powers. It’s possible that this could all come crashing down by the end, but we’re excited to see what else Night Head 2041 has up its sleeve!