ANANTA bosses and enemies: every fight shown so far

So far NetEase has shown one boss fight from start to finish: the Black Metal Crew’s giant red truck that ends the mission in the 2025 gameplay video, the same mission the press played at Tokyo Game Show 2025 (fact in the registry). The trailers add bigger foes in passing, from a winged monster over a traffic jam to a stone bust with floating hands, but no hands-on report we read describes fighting one of them.

Below are the enemy types and fights from NetEase’s videos and from the press reports on the Tokyo Game Show 2025 and Gamescom 2026 demos, with timecodes. How the fighting works is covered in how combat works in ANANTA, and what the gangs mean for crime and the police in can you be a villain in ANANTA.

Who do you fight in ANANTA?

Mostly people. NetEase’s 2025 press release lists gang clashes among the events you can trigger on the map and lets you take enemies’ weapons in battle, and GamesRadar+ described Nova City in 2025 as full of warring gangs, superpowered villains and the occasional supernatural entity. What the videos and demos show:

• Black Metal Crew: gang members in spiked red masks and leather jackets, so far the only gang named in the subtitles. They are the opponents throughout the 2025 gameplay mission, block a street in the 2025 gameplay trailer (1:00) and fill a street with saws and clubs in the announce trailer (0:52).
• Street thugs: men in red jackets end up in a dumpster in the 2025 gameplay trailer (1:12), bikers in red wait outside a garage (5:27), and a gang with chainsaws surrounds an SUV in the announce trailer (0:58).
• Robbers: a robber in a robot mask, Masked Malice Robber in the subtitles, and a crew in smiley-face vests hold people in a marble lobby (1:33). In the Tokyo Game Show 2025 demo, Dengeki Online found bank robbers in the city, and taking them down was one of the tasks, although the writer stressed that ANANTA isn’t an open world packed with villains to defeat.
• Men in suits: a fighter with a giant golden hammer takes on men with CCTV cameras for heads (2:00), and men in black suits hold a man at gunpoint in a lounge (3:36).
• ParaBoar: the gang that rules the Veluxity Zone on the official site; NetEase hasn’t shown a fight with it yet.
• Kidnappers and goons from the Gamescom 2026 demo, and Chaos creatures from the trailers: both are covered below.

The monster truck: the boss of the 2025 gameplay mission

The fullest fight NetEase has released is in the ten-minute 2025 gameplay video, one mission split into chapters. It runs in three stages:

• Street brawl (0:20). The Captain fights Black Metal Hammer and Black Metal Rhythmist while an enemy counter ticks down in the corner; the gang members explain that their boss wants to hold a concert in Nova City because a small stadium can’t handle his rock show. When the chase begins, the Captain lashes the crowd with a black tendril, and one masked fighter carries a drum for a shield (1:04).
• Car chase (2:11). Lykaia drives while the Captain stands up and shoots at the gang’s off-road trucks on the expressway, aiming for the tires. Bikers in red join in an underpass (4:28), and more trucks attack in the chapter called Escalation (5:57).
• Truck finale (7:27). A blow throws the Captain out of the car in front of a giant red truck with a grille of spinning drums, and two round button prompts appear on screen. From 7:50 the Captain reaches for wrecked cars with the tendril, rides a sheet of metal across the sand behind the truck, dodges its flames and, holding a blue barrel, tells it to quit hurling stuff. At 8:55 Lykaia drives up and throws the Captain something; the Captain leaps at the burning truck, announcing a little gift from the fans, and the truck explodes.

After the fight Lykaia introduces herself as Lykaia Reign, Director of the Nova City Crime Agency (9:43; fact in the registry).

How the truck fight played at Tokyo Game Show 2025

Journalists played the same mission in the first public demo (fact in the registry), and their reports match the video:

• GamesRadar+ (Alessandro Fillari): after the fight with the Black Metal Rhythmists and an extended chase came a quick-time sequence straight out of Uncharted 4, with the Captain dragged behind a truck and dodging barrels. The writer was impressed by the set-piece encounters.
• IGN Japan (Takuya Watanabe): the story mode lasted about ten minutes; QTEs come up from time to time, and in one scene the protagonist, dragged along by an enemy vehicle, fights back with tentacle-like arms.
• AUTOMATON (Akihiro Sakurai): countless cars and trucks go flying in a flashy sequence mixed with QTEs, until the heroes take out their pursuers.
• AUTOMATON WEST (Takayuki Sawahata), looking back a year later: enemy combat, a gun battle on top of a car, driving action and a wire action QTE in one seamless flow.

The mission came back at Gamescom 2026. IGN China writes that the first 15 minutes of its roughly 40-minute session were the stage from Tokyo, and AXYO recognized the scene from the year before. IGN China found the QTEs at critical moments easy to pass with a little attention. Our assessment: the truck works as a scripted set piece in the Uncharted mold rather than a long one-on-one duel.

Who is the giant in the helmet?

At 8:55, just before the explosion, the Captain greets a huge man in a red-and-black leather outfit with a steel helmet and chains. The video doesn’t name him and doesn’t show a fight with him. Our assessment: he is probably the Black Metal boss the gang members mention at the start, the one who wants a bigger stage for his rock show. NetEase hasn’t confirmed it.

Whether the gang matches the rock ’n’ roll fanatics from the Captain’s official bio is discussed in can you be a villain in ANANTA.

Chaos creatures and other supernatural threats

Chaos is NetEase’s name for the supernatural trouble the ACD handles; what it is and where it may come from is in ANANTA story and world explained. In the videos, Chaos and other strange threats look like this:

• 2024 teaser: a train snakes through the sky with explosions along it (0:08), and a giant dark creature clings to a lattice tower (0:18).
• Announce trailer: a glowing jellyfish-like creature floats over a street (0:24), and toilets on mechanical legs run down a highway (0:48), which NetEase’s 2024 press release lists among the Chaos in Nova City. A dark mass with glowing eyes fills a room as purple hands rise from the floor, and in a hall of framed portraits a giant stone bust with floating hands fights a small figure (1:20). A girl fights a walking robot carrying a car (1:32).
• 2025 gameplay trailer: a blue robot runs riot outside a shop (1:23), an armored machine flies past a tower in the chapter A huge challenge (2:18), and a giant winged shape roars over a jammed street; the Captain calls it a huge mosquito (2:42). NetEase’s description of its 2025 gameplay video says a Maniac Chaos causing a traffic jam is what made the Captain an internet sensation (timeline).
• Launch Date Trailer: the Captain wrestles a large dark creature amid speakers and wreckage (1:14).
• Project Mugen trailer from 2023, before the rename: a giant creature in a flooded subway station (0:29) and a giant with a halo hanging between skyscrapers while a huge glowing foot stomps a street (1:11).

Our assessment: the stone bust and the winged monster look like boss encounters, but NetEase hasn’t shown how either fight plays. In the demos Chaos stayed out of sight: AUTOMATON didn’t run into it at Tokyo Game Show 2025, which left much of the setting unclear. The supernatural moments the press did describe weren’t fights. As Taffy, GamesRadar+ delivered a coffin with a vampire inside that started vomiting a rainbow halfway through the ride, and at Gamescom 2026 MMORPG.com fled through a collapsing, shifting cave world as Wei Yinglong and found an eldritch sea monster looking back.

Rivals, duels and trials

Some trailer fights set the Captain against opponents NetEase hasn’t named. In the Launch Date Trailer masked gunmen surround the Captain and a cat-eared girl in a hall (1:10). The Captain looks up at a glowing figure in a stormy sky, then the Captain and a long-haired man in a dark coat fly at each other through red dust, and the next shot is a huge crater (1:20). Later a man with a black wolf’s head fights amid flying birdcages and inside a wooden hall (2:16, 2:24), and at Bachong Pagoda the Captain, told that only those who pass the trials may see the Lingjing inside, ends up face down on a mat under someone’s fist (2:08).

Our assessment: the duel in the dust looks like a story fight with a rival who has powers of his own; NetEase hasn’t said who he is. The martial arts masters you can learn from are covered in how combat works in ANANTA.

Gamescom 2026: goons, kidnappers and a boss in the sandbox

The new part of the Gamescom 2026 demo was Wei Yinglong’s story, which is mostly stealth. Ali Jones of GamesRadar+ first fought rust-punk bad guys in leathers with Mad Max-style vehicles in the city and met more random goons while exploring, then as Yinglong evaded organized kidnappers in sharp suits and animal masks. Famitsu describes that stealth as simple: you slip past the enemies’ line of sight, and if they spot you, you can retry at once. AXYO notes that Yinglong had no notable combat mechanics in that section, and Game8’s two excerpts at a closed showing in August had no combat at all.

The only demo fight a writer called a boss fight comes from MMORPG.com. Luis Gutierrez played the open-world sandbox, which the writer compares to GTA Online and says is meant for friends, and as the Captain tried one activity: “a small boss fight in the middle of the city” that felt like Marvel’s Spider-Man. The preview doesn’t say which boss.

How hard are the fights?

Easy in the demos. Famitsu’s writer allowed that the Tokyo demo’s enemies might simply have been weak but found battle difficulty low, and AUTOMATON called the action difficulty fairly low. IGN China writes that the 2026 chase isn’t hardcore and that another game might be criticized for being this easy. Producer Ash says the lenient timing is deliberate (fact in the registry); counters, stun gauges and QTEs are in how combat works in ANANTA, and the full verdicts in what the press said after playing ANANTA.

Will there be co-op bosses or raids?

Nothing has been announced. Producer Ash told IGN Japan in 2025 that multiplayer is for playing with friends rather than with strangers as in an MMORPG, and that you can play alone or take on high-difficulty missions with friends (fact in the registry). Ash also told GamesRadar+ that the team is developing a feature for several characters to team up against other antagonists, and in September 2026 NetEase told AUTOMATON that a multiplayer mode is in development, with details to come (fact in the registry). None of them mentions bosses or raids; the rest is in ANANTA multiplayer and co-op.

What NetEase hasn’t said

• How many bosses ANANTA has, and whether the monster truck is typical of them.
• Who leads the Black Metal Crew, and whether the giant in the helmet is that boss.
• Which Chaos creatures you fight, and whether the stone bust and the winged monster are boss fights.
• Whether there are raids or co-op bosses; so far only harder missions with friends have been mentioned.
• Whether you can replay a boss fight or meet a boss again.
• Whether there are difficulty settings.
• What threats the cities added after launch will bring: Ash Qi told GamesRadar+ that new cities and districts will introduce new threats (fact in the registry).
• What the big mission to save the world is: the developers told Famitsu they are keeping it a surprise.

ANANTA launches on January 15, 2027 on PC, PS5, iOS and Android (fact in the registry).