A twenty-six episode anime television series adaptation by Madhouse was broadcast on Nippon TV from April to September 2009.

The Three Kingdoms period has been a popular theme in Japanese manga for decades, but Sōten Kōro differs greatly from most of the others on several points.

By this, the traditional hero of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei, takes on relatively less importance within the story and is portrayed in a less positive light.

Yet, several aspects of the story are in fact based on the novel version, including the employment of its original characters such as Diao Chan, as well as anachronistic weapons such as Guan Yu’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade and Zhang Fei’s Viper Spear.

[12] In 1998, along with Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji, Sōten Kōro won the 22nd Kodansha Manga Award in the general category.