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Moshidora Business Novel Gets TV Anime Next March (Update 5)

The Japanese public broadcaster NHK will launch an anime adaptation of Natsumi Iwasaki's Moshi Kōkō Yakyū no Joshi Manager ga Drucker no "Management" o Yondara (Moshidora) business novel in mid-March next year.

The 2009 novel, whose title has been translated as What If a Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker's "Management"?, centers around a high school girl named Minami Kawashima who becomes the baseball team manager at Tokyo's Hodokubo High School. Minami accidentally buys Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices — a classic productivity guide by the Austrian-American management guru Peter Drucker — and uses it to rally her dispirited team.

Diamond, Inc. has published over 1.3 million copies of the best-selling novel. The 10-episode anime series is aimed at men and women in their 30s and 40s, and it will run around the 10:55 p.m. timeframe. The new anime will be the first animated program to run on NHK's General channel in five years; the last animated program, MBC's Korean program Jang Geum's Dream, aired from April to December of 2006.

Source: Nikkan Sports

Update: Iwasaki once produced the all-female idol group AKB48 and worked on Downtown no Gottsu Ee Kanji and other television programs.

Update 2: The official website is hosting a promotional video for the novel via YouTube:

Update 3: The Sankei Shimbun paper reports that Takayuki Hamana (The Prince of Tennis, The Beast Player Erin, Library War) will direct the project.

Update 4: Pony Canyon public relations representative Teppei Nojima confirmed that Production I.G is producing the animation and that Jun'ichi Fujisaku (The Beast Player Erin, Blood+, xxxHOLiC the Movie: A Midsummer Night's Dream) is supervising the scripts. [Via Moon Phase]

Update 5: The official website now has a preview page.

Image © Natsumi Iwasaki, Diamond, Inc./NHK, NEP, IG