By On February 11, 2025, Netflix will release the second anime film set in their Witcher universe. Though the first anime film, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf was an original story following Vesemir, the new film, titled The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, will follow the main characters from the television series in an adaptation of one of the most beloved Witcher short stories.
Geralt of Rivia will be the star, and he will be voiced by the videogame Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle, an interim Geralt between Henry Cavill and Liam Hemsworth. In addition to Geralt, Joey Batey will reprise his role of Jaskier in a lead role, and Anya Chalotra will have a brief but impactful role as Geralt’s lover Yennefer of Vengerberg.
As an adaptation of the short story A Little Sacrifice from the collection The Sword of Destiny, the anime film will be set in between episodes of Season 1 of the main series, after Geralt met Yennefer in Episode 5 and before they parted ways in Episode 6.
The short story serves as a bonding adventure for Geralt and Jaskier, a parody of The Little Mermaid, the story of a burgeoning war between mankind and the creatures of the deep sea, and also as a romance between Geralt and Jaskier’s friend and fellow bard Essi Daven. All of these elements will be included in the anime adaptation but, as was the case with the main series, the adaptation will expand some elements, reduce others, and even add some completely new material.
Though the film is only coming out in a few weeks, we have learned enough to have a good idea of the largest deviations between the anime and the short story.
SPOILER WARNING! This article contains spoilers for the short story A Little Sacrifice and its anime adaptation.
A war between humans and the creatures of the sea will be the main focus
As one would expect from an anime film, and as was clear upon watching the trailer, there will be a lot more action and political intrigue in the film than there was in the short story. And we do mean A LOT. In the short story, there was essentially just one action sequence, a fight between Geralt and several sentient deep sea monsters based on the Vodyanoy from Slavic mythology which occurred on a seabed exposed by the tides. A version of this scene does seem to be part of the anime film, as we see a glimpse of a similar-looking scene in promotional materials.
In the books, a crisis was averted when the mermaid Sh’eenaz intervened. In the film, things will escalate quite a bit more, resulting in an all-out battle between the humans and the sea creatures. We see a lot of that in the trailer, which you can watch below.
Most of the action we see here was not in the short story: Geralt’s campsite ambush by the Vodyanoy creature, Geralt’s fight with the giant lizard, and the battle at sea between human ships and the attacking sea monsters are all new material. The Kraken-looking monster is also brand new.
But of course, it’s not possible to just slap sprawling action scenes into the existing story, more needs to be added to build the tensions between the humans and the sea creatures.
Not only will there be some added depth to the human characters of Bremervoord led by King Usveldt and his son Prince Agloval, but we will also be introduced to the world of the sea creatures as well as their King Basim, Queen Dahut, and Princess Sh’eenaz.
Like in the short story, Agloval and Sh’eenaz will be lovers, and their love will be the catalyst to end the war. We also heard that there is an intriguing character named Melusina, a mermaid witch who will have a key role reminiscent of the Sea Witch from the fairytale of The Little Mermaid.
With all this added material in a 90-minute anime film, fans will wonder if this comes at the expense of beloved scenes, moments, and themes included in the short story, which spent most of its pages on banter between Geralt and Essi or Geralt and Jaskier. What we’ve heard is this: most of the elements of the short story do appear in the film, with some changes, but the focus of the film is on the expanded plot of the war which was not in the short story.
The Ending Has Been Changed, In More Ways Than Expected
When The Witcher Season 3 Volume 2 dropped on Netflix, we were treated to a beautiful rendition of the song A Little Sacrifice by Ciri actress Freya Allan. The song told an all too familiar story, the story of Sh’eenaz and Agloval. But already in this song, we noticed a pretty significant change to the ending of the short story.
In the book, Sh’eenaz chooses to trade her mermaid fins for human legs to follow her love for Agloval. In the anime, the opposite will happen. Agloval will switch his human feet with merman fins, as was described in the following part of the song.
His choice was made aside the sea,
A twilit red horizon.
For she had finally made him see
His place among the sirens.A trade for surf!
He knew what it’s worth
To trade foot for fin!
Now that the film is just a few weeks out we can confirm that this will happen as we suspected. Agloval will make the “Little Sacrifice” instead of Sh’eenaz. But this isn’t the only change to the ending of the short story.
The second ending
We’ll be deliberately vague with this one so only those who read the books understand. A certain revelation regarding Essi Daven at the end of Andrzej Sapkowsi’s short story, which is an emotional standout in all of the saga, will be missing from Sirens of the Deep.
Essi will still have the romantic plotline with Geralt and has gained a new role in the adaptation as the translator between Agloval and Sh’eenaz (a role that Geralt served in the short story), but as we understand it, the revelation isn’t mentioned.
The Witcher Season 4 is in post-production for a 2025 release. Andrzej Sapkowski’s new Witcher book Crossroads of the Crow is available in Poland with The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime set for a February 11, 2025 and CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 is now in full production.
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