Arknights, the tower-defense strategy RPG mobile game developed by HyperGryph and published by Yostar, announced a school-life spin-off short anime on October 24, 2026. Arknights’ official English announcement on X introduced Rhodes Academy as a new special animation, with the tagline “Doctor, see you at school tomorrow!” The Doctor is the player’s role in the game, and the post carries the #Yostar tag. The Japanese post carries the same line in Japanese: 「ドクター、明日、学園で待っていますね！」
The Japanese account @ArknightsStaff described the project as a spin-off short anime titled ロドス学園 and asked fans to look forward to it. Both accounts posted on October 24, a simultaneous reveal for Japanese and English-speaking audiences. The announcement video, 「ロドス学園」アナウンスPV, went up on the official Japanese Arknights YouTube channel the same day, with the Japanese post pointing to a high-grade (HG) version and the English post to an HD version. The first short, “Morning Class,” followed on the Arknights Official – Yostar channel on October 25.
A School-Set Spin-Off
Arknights has three earlier anime adaptations from Yostar Pictures: Arknights: Prelude to Dawn in 2022, Arknights: Perish in Frost in 2023, and Arknights: Rise from Ember in 2025. Each followed the game’s conflict-driven story in a serialized format, and all three were full television anime, broadcast season by season. Rhodes Academy is labeled a short anime, the format term for short-form episodes, which matches the first short’s YouTube-only release. The Japanese post also marks the project explicitly as a spin-off, a side story set apart from those main adaptations.
The title keeps the Rhodes name from Rhodes Island, the organization the player leads in the game. The game is set on the world of Terra, where the Oripathy infection and the Infected drive its conflict, so the campus setting leaves the war story behind for this project.
YouTube-First Rollout
Both parts of the rollout live on Arknights’ official YouTube channels. The Japanese channel carried the announcement video, and the English/global channel carried “Morning Class,” which landed one day after the announcement. The posts name no broadcast date or television window, so YouTube is the only home the first-party posts describe. The announcement video has passed 190,000 views and “Morning Class” 90,000.
Arknights joins other game franchises moving into animation and television. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is streaming on Netflix, and the Fallout Shelter competition series arrives January 13, while Rhodes Academy runs on YouTube.
What the Announcement Leaves Out
No full-series release date, episode count, broadcast platform beyond YouTube, production studio, or cast list appears in the posts. The English announcement says the project “will soon be airing” even though the first short is already online, and the posts do not say whether “Morning Class” is a pilot, part of a weekly schedule, or a standalone preview.
