TIL: T.A.T.U. was slated to get their own anime series

Remember in the early 2000s when the band T.A.T.U. and how big they were in those days? They did the excellent song “All The Things She Said” and “Not Gonna Get Us” which are still bangers today. But did you know that behind the scenes, there were already plans for a T.A.T.U. anime series?

The official title of the anime feature film was t.A.T.u. Paragate  and was slated for release back in 2024 which was the peak of the popularity of the girl group. The actual anime project was announced in 2003 and was done by the studio iMOVE who also did extensive work in anime titles like Inuyasha and Death Note. However, before the movie was even marketed and released the girls of t.A.T.u. split away from their manager Ivan Shapovalov, who they claimed was constantly drumming up controversy over their public image working around the kosei erotic genre.

The film subsequently lost traction and their website was later taken down in 2005.

As of this post, the girls are still officially split up having done so in 2011 with one of them saying that they were “very tired of each other”.

Here are some of the images from that anime series that never materialized

At this point, Paragate is now considered lost media