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Vampire Visual Kei Anime Visual Prison Casts Tomokazu Sugita, Reveals Song Info

The official website for Visual Prison, the original television anime from Uta no Prince Sama and Symphogear series creator Noriyasu Agematsu and Aniplex's A-1 Pictures, revealed the anime's opening and ending theme songs on Monday. In addition, the site revealed that Tomokazu Sugita will join the anime's cast as the mascot character Panya (seen below).

The in-story band Oz will perform the opening theme song "Zankoku Shangri-la" (Cruel Shangri-la). The in-story band Los†Eden will perform the ending theme song "Bloody Kiss." The in-story band Eclipse will perform the insert song "Gyokuza no Gemini" (Gemini of the Throne).

Aniplex describes the project as portraying visual kei musicians as vampires. The visual kei genre is a subgenre of Japanese rock characterized by elaborate visual presentations, gothic aesthetics, balladic melody writing, and musicians who present androgynously. In the anime's story, vampires perform visual kei music, and gather together in Harajuku in an event known as "Visual Prison" under a red moon once a year, performing visual kei songs to entrance an audience and offer the best song to the red moon above.

The story begins when Ange Yuki, a lonely boy with no family, travels to Harajuku to see his favorite artist, and there sees an intense musical battle between the bands Eclipse and Lost Eden, their energetic performance striking a pain through his heart.

The cast, divided by their respective units, are as follows:

Oz (center in image above):

• Shōya Chiba as Ange Yuki (center left in visual)
• Makoto Furukawa Guiltia Brion (center right in visual)
• Hiroki Nanami as Eve Louise (rightmost in visual)
• Shun Horie as Robin Laffite (leftmost in visual)

Los†Eden (right in image above):

• Takuya Eguchi as Latour Saga (right in visual)
• Shimazaki Nobunaga as Mist Flaive (top in visual)
• Takuma Nagatsuka as Veuve Elizabeth (bottom in visual)
• Shōgo Yano as Jack Mouton (left in visual)

Eclipse (left in image above):

• Toshiki Masuda as Dmitri Romanee (left in visual)
• Shōta Aoi as Hyde Jayer (right in visual)

Takeshi Furuta (Utano☆Princesama Legend Star, Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold) is serving as the chief director with Tomoya Tanaka directing at A-1 Pictures. Yukie Sugawara (The Idolm@ster SideM, Overlord) is supervising the series scripts. Minako Shiba (Black Butler, DAKAICHI -I'm being harassed by the sexiest man of the year-, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee) is adapting the original character designs by Ikumi Katagiri (Sakura Kakumei ~Hana Saku Otome-tachi~, Are You Alice?) for animation. Jinshichi Yamaguchi, Hiroshi Yakou, and Honoka Yokoyama are handling the sub-character designs, and Yakou, Yamaguchi, and Reina Kawasaki are also serving as chief animation directors.

Takayuki Kidou is designing the props. Hiroshi Katō is supervising the art with Hirofumi Sakagami as art director. Katō and Mitsuki Maeda are also serving as art designers. Kanako Hokari and Mayu Morita are the color key artists and Ryuta Undo is directing the CG. Akito Suzuki is the compositing director of photography, and Eiichi Nishimura is editing. Satoshi Motoyama is directing the sound. Elements Garden is producing the music.

The anime will premiere this October.

Sources: Visual Prison anime's website, Comic Natalie