Over the course of the past day or so (at the time of writing this), several videos have been revealed for a few anime shows that I am quite interesting in watching. There are six, and the shows I’ll be highlighting here are Himouto! Umaru-chan R, Toji no Miko, Encouragement of Climb, Märchen Mädchen, Slow Start and Girls’ Last Tour.
Up first, the second season of Himouto! Umaru-chan. It will be called Himouto! Umaru-chan R. The official website for the anime revealed a character video for the second season, focusing on Umaru herself.
The main staff are returning from the first season. This includes anime studio Doga Kobo, director Masahiko Ohta, series script supervisor Takashi Aoshima, and character designer Aya Takano.
The returning cast members are as follows:
- Aimi Tanaka as Umaru Doma
- Kenji Nojima as Taihei Doma
- Akari Kageyama as Nana Ebina
- Haruka Shiraishi as Kirie Motoba
- Yurina Furukawa as Sylphynford Tachibana
Himouto! Umaru-chan is due to start airing in October, as part of 2017’s autumn season of anime.
Next, more details for Studio Gokumi’s Toji no Miko, as revealed on the official website.
The PV video reveals the cast for the show.
Kaede Hondo as Kanami Etou
Saori Oonishi as Hiyori Juujou
Azumi Waki as Mai Yanase
Hina Kino as Sayaka Itomi
I’ve previously posted about the characters shown above, so you can click here to get an idea of what they are like. There are also some characters I’ve not mentioned before, so I’ll go into a little more detail about them here.
Risae Matsuda as Kaoru Mashiko
Kaoru Mashiko is a 15-year-old first year student at Osafune Girls’ Academy. Her sword is Nenekirimaru. She doesn’t say a lot and doesn’t freely expend energy to trouble herself. Kaoru uses the first-person pronoun “ore”, which is masculine. Despite being short, she is a power fighter who wields a huge sword. Her guardian beast, Nene, accompanies her. Ellen annoys her, but Kaoru actually puts a lot of trust in her.
Eri Suzuki as Ellen Kohagura
Ellen Kohagura is a 15-year-old first year student at Osafune Girls’ Academy. Her sword is Echizen Yasutsugu. She fills the role of the half-foreign character, with a Japanese father and American mother. Ellen has an innocent personality, and frequently smiles to set the mood. Kaoru is her partner. Ellen is the outgoing type, and gives nicknames to people right away.
Yumi Uchiayama as Maki Shidou
Maki Shidou is the first seat in the elite guards for the Origami family. She joined the guard after becoming the sword fighting champion in the last two tournaments for Toji. She wields honest strength based on belief, and as such her sword is sharp and heavy blow-by-blow. She is Yukari Origami’s bodyguard, and has strategic command of aratama suppression. It is rare for her not to go into battle, and she only has to draw her sword once to suppress aratama. Maki is popular with both males and females.
M.A.O as Suzuka Konahana
Suzuka Konahana is the second seat in the Origami family’s elite guards. She is the daughter of Kyoto’s noble Korehana family, and moves elegantly. The strength she possesses allowed her to become the runner-up in the past two sword fighting tournaments. Because of that, she sees Maki as her rival. With her keen insight, Suzuka is often entrusted with direct strategic command. She also has Yukari’s political duties.
Mai Fuchigami as Yomi Satsuki
Yomi Satsuki is the third seat in the Origami family’s elite guards. She restrains herself more than any of the other guards, particularly at Yukari Origami’s side. Yomi’s the type who doesn’t openly express her emotions, and will not talk more than necessary. Unlike Maki and Suzuka, she doesn’t have any particular achievements. However, her skills are unknown.
Inori Minase as Yuma Tsubakuro
Yuma Tsubakuro is the fourt seat in the Origami family’s elite guards. She may be the youngest of the guards, but her skill with a sword surpasses even Maki. She has a childish personality, and can’t be stopped when she gets into a certain mood. This results in others around her treating her cautiously, and she rarely has permission to go into battle. Yuma is less than thrilled about that.
Asami Seto as Yukari Origami
Yukari Origami is the head of the Origami family and director of the police swords administration bureau. It is said that she stands above all sword-users. 20 years ago she became a hero, while serving as leader of a task force during a disaster at the Sagami coast. There, she defeated a large aratama that had dealt massive damage. Her power has not weakened since then, and she remains the strongest.
I’ll be honest here; I feel like the designs for the main characters are pretty generic. However, I do like the designs for the elite guards of the Origami family. Maki and Yuma are the ones that particularly stand out to me.
Encouragement of Climb: Memories Present is an upcoming OVA for the Encouragement of Climb (or Yama no Susume if you prefer) series. The official website began streaming a trailer for it:
It seems the OVA will feature Aoi and Hinata reminiscing. It is about 28 minutes long. It will have an event screening at 10 Aeon Cinema theatres on October 28.
The third season of Encouragement of Climb is also due to air in 2018.
Now we turn out attention to a show that I have mentioned a couple of times before: Märchen Mädchen. The official website began streaming the first trailer for the anime:
The video reveals and previews “Daremo Watashi o Shiranai Sekai e” (To a World Where Nobody Knows Me) by Reina Ueda. It is an image song for the anime.
I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this before, but Märchen Mädchen is due to air in 2018.
The official website for the Slow Start anime has began streaming a teaser video for the anime. The video on the website is region-locked to Japan, so here it is from Dailymotion instead:
Slow Start will premiere in January 2018.
Finally, we turn our attention to Girls’ Last Tour.
Girls’ Last Tour about two girls, Chito and Yuuri, who aimlessly wander around a post-apocalyptic wasteland on their Kettenkrad motorbike. Civilisation may be gone, but as long as Chito and Yuuri are together then their existence has a ray or two of sunshine in it.
The official website for the anime has revealed a new teaser promo video for the show:
Takaharu Ozaki (Persona 5 the Animation -The Day Breakers-) is directing the anime at WHITE FOX. Kazuyuki Fudeyasu (Is the order a rabbit?, Monster Musume) is writing and overseeing the scripts, and Mai Toda (Matoi the Sacred Slayer, Holy Knight) is designing the characters and serving as chief animation director. Shō Tanaka (No Game, No Life, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-) is producing the anime. Kenichiro Suehiro (Space Patrol Luluco, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-) is composing the music.
Other staff members include
- Kettenkrad Design, Modelling: Hiroshi Souma
- Prop Design: Goichi Iwahata, Noritaka Suzuki
- Art Setting: Ryō Hirata, Takahiro Ishimoto, Ren Ishimori, Yasuhiro Moriki
- Art Director: Masakazu Miyake
- Colour Design: Hiroyasu Kanemitsu (Wish)
- Special Effects Supervisor: Kumiko Taniguchi (Team Taniguchi)
- Director of Photography: Kazumasa Someya (T2 Studio)
- 3D Director: Patricia Hishikawa (IKIF+)
- Editing: Masahiro Goto (REAL-T)
- Sound Director: Jin Aketagawa
- Sound Effects: Tomoji Furuya (Swara Pro)
Girls’ Last Tour is due to premiere in October, as part of 2017’s autumn season of anime.
That about wraps up everything I wanted to share here. Plenty to look forward to here.
Rory Muses 