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Crunchyroll to Stream Digimon Adventure tri. Anime on Friday

Media distribution service Crunchyroll announced on Thursday that it will stream the "first four episodes" of the Digimon Adventure tri. anime on Friday at 10:00 a.m. EST for users in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America.

Crunchyroll will stream the "next chapter" of the series in March 2016.

Crunchyroll describes the anime:

It's been six years since that summer adventure when Taichi “Tai” Yagami and the rest of the DigiDestined crossed over to the Digital World. And nearly three years have passed since the final battle between Hikari Yagami's group and BelialVamdemon. As the peaceful days passed by, at some point the gate to the Digital World closed. Not even the DigiDestined know what caused this, and time alone continues to pass.

On one such day, a Kuwagamon suddenly appears in Odaiba. Its rampage leaves the town in ruins, and the people there in turmoil. Taichi happens to catch sight of the Kuwagamon, and he chases after it all by himself in an effort to halt its rampage. But there's nothing he can do against a Kuwagamon.

"It's no use... I can't do anything about this alone..."

Just as the Kuwagamon roars and attacks Taichi, his Digivice begins to emit a bright light…

"Taichi, look how big you've grown!"

With the sound of that nostalgic voice, the story once again begins to move in a big way.

Once again, the adventure evolves.

The first film in the planned six-part anime film series, Digimon Adventure tri. Saikai, will start its limited three-week engagement in Japanese theaters on Saturday. The film's staff already hosted an advance screening of the film on October 23, followed by a Niconico Live special streaming on October 25. The Blu-ray Disc for the first part will initially go on sale at the theaters on Saturday, and iTunes will also sell the first part on the same day. The retail Blu-ray and DVD releases will follow on December 18.

The cast for the human characters in Digimon Adventure tri. is completely different from the original Digimon Adventure series, and includes:

Natsuki Hanae as Taichi Yagami

Suzuko Mimori as Sora Takenouchi

Yoshimasa Hosoya as Yamato Ishida

Mutsumi Tamura as Kōshirō Izumi

Hitomi Yoshida as Mimi Tachikawa

Junya Ikeda as Jō Kido

Junya Enoki as Takeru Takaishi

MAO as Hikari Yagami

Daisuke Namikawa as Daigo Nishijima, a part-time teacher who serves as a substitute homeroom teacher

Yūko Kaida as Maki Himekawa, a mysterious woman who appears before the DigiDestined

Miho Morikawa as Meiko Mochizuki, a shy and quiet girl who transfers into the same class as Taichi

Additionally, Hiroaki Hirata will narrate the films, and Chiaki Matsuzawa will play a news announcer.

The original cast for the Digimon partners are returning for the new anime. Atsuya Uki (Cencoroll, tsuritama) is providing the character designs, Yuuko Kakihara (Heaven's Lost Property) is acting as series script supervisor, and Keitaro Motonaga (Rayearth) is directing.

AiM (Ai Maeda) is returning for the first part's ending theme "I wish." Kōji Wada returns to perform the original opening theme song "Butter-Fly," while Ayumi Miyazaki also returns to perform the insert song "Brave Heart." All three songs are new recordings of songs from the original Digimon Adventure series, and the CDs for all three will go on sale on November 25.

Update: Crunchyroll edited its post to say that it will stream the "next chapter" in March 2016, not winter 2016 as the company previously stated.