Kojima Productions has released the first teaser trailer for Death Stranding Isolations, the hand-drawn animated series set in the world of its post-apocalyptic delivery games. The studio also named the rest of the main creative team and gave the show its tagline: “My mom became a crater.” The series streams exclusively on Disney+ in 2027.
What the teaser reveals
The teaser runs about 45 seconds and is on Kojima Productions’ official YouTube channel in English and Japanese cuts. It is the first real look at a project that was announced a year ago with only a title card. The key art shown with the trailer sets the tone. A blonde young woman in a fitted, goggled suit stands in front of a heavy futuristic motorcycle. Beside her is a squat, robot-like companion with a single red eye, and behind them a huge crater has been punched into a grey, cracked plain with snow-capped mountains on the horizon.
That crater explains the tagline. In Death Stranding, a “voidout”, the explosion that happens when the dead come into contact with the living, leaves behind exactly this kind of crater. Players learn early on that a voidout can wipe out an entire city. A protagonist who lost her mother to one is a very Death Stranding starting point, even though the show is telling its own story.
An original story, not an adaptation
Kojima Productions has said from the start that Isolations is not a retelling of Sam Porter Bridges’ journey. It is an original story with its own cast. According to the new details, it follows a young man and a young woman on an adventure across North America. It is set in the period just after Sam has reconnected the continent through the Chiral Network, which is how the first game ends.
That timing gives the show plenty of room. The games spend most of their time on the act of reconnecting America, with porters hauling cargo between isolated bunkers and Knot Cities. A story set right after that work is done can ask what a newly connected country actually feels like to the people living in it, and how much loss came before it. Fans who have played both games will recognise the setting, but nobody will need a save file to follow along.
The team behind it
Hideo Kojima is executive producer, and Takayuki Sano directs. The new names in this announcement explain why the reveal has drawn attention beyond the game’s fanbase:
- Series composition and screenplay: Tow Ubukata. Ubukata is the novelist behind Mardock Scramble. In anime, he led series composition on Ghost in the Shell: Arise and worked on Psycho-Pass 2 and the Fafner series. He has a long track record with hard-edged, idea-driven science fiction.
- Original character design: Ilya Kuvshinov. The illustrator’s style is instantly recognisable, and he previously handled character design for Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.
- Animation: E&H production, with Kojima Productions producing.
The series is hand-drawn 2D animation. That is a deliberate contrast with the photoreal, actor-scanned look of the games, where Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux and Mads Mikkelsen were captured performance by performance. In animation, the world and its strange weather can be stylised in ways the games’ engine never attempted.
Where it fits in the Death Stranding expansion
Isolations was first announced in November 2025 at a Disney+ originals showcase in Hong Kong. At that point, “Isolations” was described as a working title. It was Kojima Productions’ first partnership with a global streaming platform. The project is one of several attempts to take Death Stranding beyond games. A live-action film is in development with A24, and the studio has a separate anime film in the works under the working title Death Stranding Mosquito.
The games themselves are still active. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launched on PS5 in 2025 and arrived on PC in March 2026, and Kojima Productions is also busy with OD and the spy action game Physint. That is a lot for one studio to have running at once. Unlike the other screen projects, though, Isolations now has a trailer, a full core team and a release year.
When can you watch it?
Death Stranding Isolations streams exclusively on Disney+ in 2027. Kojima Productions has not given a more specific date or an episode count yet, and has not said whether the show will carry a different title by launch. The teaser is the best look so far, and we’ll report the premiere date once Disney and Kojima Productions confirm it.
