New and upcoming ANANTA characters: confirmed, rumored and removed

Six characters are confirmed as playable when ANANTA launches on January 15, 2027: the Captain, Shi Ye, Taffy, Richie, Wei Yinglong and Seymour (fact in the registry). Every other name below gets one of the labels explained next.

How we label ANANTA characters

• Confirmed playable: NetEase presents the character as playable.
• Shown, not confirmed playable: the character appears in NetEase’s materials, but nobody at NetEase has said you can play as them.
• Removed: the character lost a profile on the official site.
• Rumor: the name comes from a secondary source that doesn’t point to NetEase.

Playable at launch: confirmed by NetEase

The official site presents these six; profiles are in our guide to ANANTA characters, and the same roster is in the ANANTA tier list.

• The Captain: the new captain of the ACD and the hero the story starts with. A female Captain will be available at launch alongside the male one, the team told GAME Watch and Pocket Tactics (fact in the registry).
• Shi Ye: the Captain’s childhood friend with a gadget for every job; Pocket Tactics notes she joined the cast later than the others.
• Taffy: a courier, the ACD’s other agent and co-founder of the Yeet Squad.
• Richie: an NCCA police officer who works with the ACD and can check citizens for warrants.
• Wei Yinglong: head of the temple in Longqi Village, who calls herself Lingyun’s 21st Director.
• Seymour: a masked hacker who lives in an RV.

Will there be more than six at launch? NetEase hasn’t given a number. A NetEase representative told AUTOMATON at Gamescom 2026 that the characters from both demos will definitely be in the release and that players can expect characters with more professions (fact in the registry). The question stays open in our list of unknowns.

How new characters will arrive

You won’t buy them. Characters aren’t sold through gacha; you unlock them by playing (fact in the registry). Producer Ash Qi told GamesRadar the roster will grow with the main story in free updates, and compared the structure to Marvel films, where heroes have their own stories and meet for big events (fact in the registry). He told Denfaminicogamer that new characters will follow the jobs that exist in the city.

The game’s publishing and marketing leads told Insider Gaming at Gamescom 2026 that ANANTA will be supported for at least seven years, with regular new quests, characters and maps (fact in the registry). NetEase hasn’t published a date for the first new character.

Recruits are a separate system: more than 100 residents with their own stories can be recruited and unlock items, badges and combat abilities, according to NetEase’s Gamescom 2026 materials (fact in the registry). NetEase hasn’t said any of them become playable.

Shown by NetEase, not confirmed as playable

These characters appear in NetEase’s own materials, but nobody has said you can play as them.

Residents from the official site

• Victor: a mustached Downtown resident in a superhero costume.
• Frank Forker: a Downtown hot dog seller who advertises the Rodriguez brand.
• Tie Shan: a martial artist from Longqi Village, shown sparring with the Captain.
• Arms: a Veluxity Zone fixer who says he can get you whatever you need.
• Broadcast Goose: a goose at Weilan Lake that shouts supermarket ads.

Names on in-world company pages

Three in-world company pages on the official site name people. Aerie Bank is run by Lily Leonas, heir to the Leonas family business. Saturn Entertainment presents its star director, Minajima Kazu. Zenith Project names its founder, Ji Yunzhou. None of the three is named in the official trailers we have broken down scene by scene.

Lykaia Reign

In the 2025 gameplay video, a fox-eared woman drives the Captain away from a gang in a blue convertible and introduces herself in the subtitles as Lykaia Reign, Director of the Nova City Crime Agency (fact in the registry). Pocket Tactics reports that a Lykaia used to feature in the Scope section of the old official site, and a fox-eared girl rides with the Captain in a convertible at the start of the 2024 announce trailer. Our assessment: this is the same character. Whether she is playable, NetEase hasn’t said.

Update, October 28: every scene with her, with timecodes, is on the Lykaia Reign database page.

Mimiko and Ringo

In the 2025 gameplay trailer, the subtitles name Mimiko and Ringo, who call for help on a highway during Richie’s police section (fact in the registry). A livestream in the 2024 announce trailer comes from a channel called MIMIKO. Pocket Tactics writes that Ringo is the girl playing beach volleyball in the announce trailer and that the official site once showed her image before an update removed it. NetEase’s character section includes neither of them.

Update, October 28: both now have database pages, Mimiko and Ringo, with the scenes and timecodes.

Removed: the Project Mugen characters

Alan, Bansy, Mechanika and Dila had profiles on the official site when the game was still called Project Mugen. Pocket Tactics reports that they were removed in the September 23, 2025 update, so the registry labels the claim that they are playable as outdated (outdated in the registry). NetEase hasn’t said whether any of them will return. How Project Mugen became ANANTA is in the history of ANANTA.

Their old bios, as Pocket Tactics retells them: Alan was a sociable blond part-time model whose yo-yo made snowflakes appear in fights, Bansy a pink-haired street artist with a gun that may leave paint splashes, Mechanika, also called Meg, a worker who brings machines to life, and Dila an investigator of a meteor disaster who can control meteors.

Lykaia and Ringo also left the old site, but NetEase videos from the same week in September 2025 name both, so they are listed above.

Rumors: names without a NetEase source

Aileen is the one name we file as a rumor. Pocket Tactics places her at the mahjong table in the 2024 announce trailer, where a robot flips the table. It doesn’t say where the name comes from, and we haven’t found it in NetEase’s materials (fact in the registry).

Fan wikis carry longer bios for some of these names, usually without pointing to NetEase, so we don’t repeat them. As of October 28, 2026 we found no press report of leaked new playable characters.

NetEase’s character section lists six playable characters as of October 28, 2026, and the game comes out on January 15, 2027 (fact in the registry).