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Little Witch Academia TV Anime Reveals More Cast, Staff, Visual

The official website for the Little Witch Academia television anime series opened on Saturday and revealed more of the anime's staff and cast. The website also revealed the show's story and a visual. The tagline on the visual on the website reads, "a new magic is now starting."

The newly revealed cast, who are reprising their roles from the previous two anime, include:

• Reina Ueda as Jasminka Antonenko
• Noriko Hidaka as Shiny Chariot

They join the following returning cast:

• Megumi Han as Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
• Fumiko Orikasa as Lotte Yanson
• Michiyo Murase as Sucy Manbavaran
• Yōko Hikasa as Diana Cavendish
• Arisa Shida as Amanda O'Neill
• Rie Murakawa as Constanze von Braunschbank Albrechtsberger

Yoh Yoshinari returns as director and original character designer at Studio Trigger. Michiru Shimada, who penned the script for the sequel film, is handling series composition. Shūhei Handa, a key animator in both the original short and sequel film, will handle main character design. Masanobu Nomura (Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Kiznaiver) is the art director, and Michiru Oshima is returning from both previous Little Witch Academia anime to compose the music. The rest of the staff includes:

Color Setting: Yukiko Kakita
Director of Photography: Daisuke Okumura, Naoki Yorozu
Main Animator: Takafumi Hori
Design Works: Yusuke Yoshigaki
Editing: Kentarou Tsubone
Sound Director: Jun Watanabe
Sound Effects: Kiyotaka Kawada

The show's story revolves around Akko, who as a child watched the witch Shiny Chariot perform a show, and from then on dreamed of becoming a witch. She enters the Luna Nova Academy, a school for witches that Shiny Chariot attended. In this new town she meets new friends and starts a new school life. At the school she has lessons on riding brooms and the wonder of magic, but Akko and her friends Lotte and Sucy keep getting wrapped up in tumultuous events.

The television anime will be a 30-minute series. The series will premiere in January and Netflix will stream the series.

The project began with a 2013 anime short that spawned the Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade sequel last year. Yoshinari created and directed the first short as part of the Anime Mirai 2013 initiative. Fans supported the second short via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that raised US$150,000 in six hours, and eventually US$625,518 (four times its original goal) in one month. The Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade sequel had its world premiere at Anime Expo in July 2015.