As we head into the fall season, I wanted to mention some recent news about a number of anime projects in the works.
Hybrid Child has finally been cast. The anime adaptation of Shungiku Nakamura's beautiful and disturbing manga will feature the following seiyuu:
Nobuhiko Okamoto - Kotaro
Daisuke Hirakawa - Hazuki
Ryohei Kimura - Ichi
Tsubasa Yonaga - Yuzu
And finally - as Kuroda, the creator of the Hybrid Children, and his love Tsukishima:
Yuuki Ono - Kuroda
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka - Tsukishima
Hybrid Child is Nakamura's finest work to date. I wrote about Hybrid Child in detail in this post if you're interested. It's taken the production a while to get off the ground, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
Junjou Romantica is getting another anime production:
And seiyuu Toru Furuya discusses Zen Kirishima, his first BL role, in the upcoming Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi spinoff OVA anime The Case of Takafumi Yokozawa:
The clip is from Furuya's panel at Anime Revolution in Vancouver, B.C. Listening to the clip, it's apparent that more fans in Canada (at least the fans that attended this convention) can understand Japanese than American fans, based on the waves of laughter at Furuya's answers before they were translated into English. ;-)
The info about his Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi role begins at 4:10. I love Furuya's reaction to the male fan who indicated that he knew what "boy's love" was: "OTOKO JA NAI??"
And - I'm not sure I can say that this anime is highly anticipated exactly... but in the footsteps of Free! comes Meganebu!
I can't get over how a seemingly innocuous thing like glasses-wearing can become a fetish, but only in Japan I guess. =D
And finally, updates on K. Or rather, I wish I had updates on K, because apparently there are none. There was a movie due out this summer (2013), but now that's been pushed ahead to 2014. And an anime series - allegedly a sequel to the original series - was supposed to be included in the fall 2013 schedule, but I've seen no confirmation of this so far.
There are prequel mangas, but they're not licensed in the U.S. at the moment. In other words there's not been much movement on the K front recently, with the exception of the English dub cast being announced at Anime Expo this summer. Meaning, at least the DVDs should be on their way to a release in the U.S. at some point which is good news. Even better news would be a new series in October as had been promised. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. =D
