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Crunchyroll to Stream Wake Up, Girl ZOO! Spinoff Anime Shorts

Media service Crunchyroll announced on Tuesday that it will begin streaming the Wake Up, Girl Zoo! anime shorts at 10:15 p.m. EST. The first five episodes will be available on Tuesday, and a new episode will stream every Tuesday afterwards. The streams will be available to premium members worldwide except Asia, and to free members in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

The anime shorts take the aspiring idols of the Wake Up, Girls! anime and turns them into mini animal mascots. The setting of the shorts is Wake Up, Girl Zoo!, a small zoo at the outskirts of Sendai in northeastern Japan. Facing the imminent demise of the zoo, the head zookeeper Tange orders breeder Matsuda to scout out a new animal unit. Can the actions of these assembled seven creatures bring back the zoo from the brink?

The main cast members are:

• Miyu Takagi as Miyu (eagle)
• Nanami Yamashita as Nanami (wolf)
• Minami Tanaka as Minami (tiger)
• Mayu Yoshioka as Mayu (lion)
• Airi Eino as Airi (shark)
• Kaya Okuno as Kaya (crocodile)
• Yoshino Aoyama as Yoshino (polar bear)

The main staff are:

• Supervisors: Yutaka Yamamoto, Touko Machida
• Director: Kenshirō Morii (Studio Moriken)
• Scripts: Kenshirō Morii, Eriko Matsuda, Atsushi Oka, Tomoko Sekine
• Character Design: Seiya Miyajima
• Production: Ordet x Studio Moriken

Crunchyroll also scheduled two previously announced live-action television series from Fuji TV: the second Iryū - Team Medical Dragon season and A Taste of Honey. Both are available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Netherlands, Central and South America including the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, France and DOM/TOM, and Andorra.

All 11 episodes of the second Iryū season began streaming at 6:00 p.m. EST to premium members, while free members can watch the first six episodes on Tuesday and the rest next week. Crunchyroll describes the series:

Ryutaro Asada, a renegade but brilliant surgeon, was being framed for a misdiagnosis and let go by the North Japanese Hospital. He went into exile and lived in a seaside shack when he was visited by Akira Kato, assistant professor of the Faculty of Cardiac Surgery at Meishin University Medical Hospital. Despite being a female doctor, Akira managed to become an assistant professor. She was ambitious and set her goal to be promoted to full professor by succeeding in a surgery using the Batista technique - an extremely difficult type of heart surgery - and to write a paper on it....

A Taste of Honey will be available to premium members at 8:00 p.m. EST, while free member can see three to four episodes every week. Crunchyroll describes the series:

A girl's undying passion towards her first love. A young man makes an enemy of society in order to accept her feelings. The sorrow and redemption of a woman who, despite abiding strictly to her principles, is derailed by her husband's change of heart. The story of three people whose lives are placed at the mercy of the monster known as love.

Images © Green Leaves/Wake Up, Girl Zoo! Production Committee