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Atsuko Asano's Battery Novels Get TV Anime in July on Noitamina
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Fuji TV revealed during a livestream event on Thursday that a television anime adaptation of Atsuko Asano's Battery baseball novels will premiere in July on its Noitamina programming block. Noitamina is streaming a teaser video for the series.
The video reveals the show's official website and Twitter account.
Tomomi Mochizuki (House of Five Leaves, Pupa) is both directing and scripting the series at Zero-G (Hyper Speed GranDoll, Shadow Skill, MD Geist II - Death Force). Takako Shimura (Wandering Son, Sweet Blue Flowers original creator) is in charge of the original character designs, Hideoki Kusama (Sket Dance, Mononoke animation director) is adapting those designs for animation and is also serving as chief animation director, and Akira Senju (Valvrave the Liberator, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) is composing the music.
The anime will star Kōki Uchiyama (Nisekoi's Raku Ichijō) as Takumi Harada, and Tasuku Hatanaka (Ushio & Tora's Ushio) as Gō Nagakura.
Asano's novels revolve around Takumi Harada, a young man who moves to a mountain town in Okayama Prefecture during the spring break before he enters middle school due to his father's job transfer. Takumi is a pitcher, and after he moves he loses faith in his own talent, when suddenly his classmate Gō Nagakura appears in front of him. Gō has a strong desire to form a "battery" (a combination of a pitcher and catcher) with Takumi.
Kyouiku Gageki originally released the series in hardback between 1996 and 2005, and Kadokawa re-released the series in paperback in 2003-2007. Chikage Yuniwa drew an eight-volume manga adaptation between 2005-2010. A live-action film adaptation opened in Japan in 2007, and a live-action television series aired in 2008. Asano's No. 6 novels also inspired a manga and a television anime adaptation.
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