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ABC Animation Establishes Music Production Company, Produces Theme Songs for Shūkan Ranobe Anime Program

ABC Animation announced on Tuesday that it has launched a music business and label. Along with the announcement, the company revealed that it will release the opening and ending theme songs for the Shūkan Ranobe Anime (Weekly Light Novel Anime) program, a new "Light-novel Anime" project, which will feature four anime works adapting original stories from popular light novel authors, partnered alongside character designs from popular illustrators.

Voice actress Chihaya Yoshitake will perform the program's opening theme song "Hajimari no Aizu" (Signal of a Start). This is also Yoshitake's debut song as a solo artist. Voice actress Ayaka Nanase feat. Takayuki "Kojiro" Sasaki will perform the ending theme song "Gunjō to Mikan no Kanata" (Ultramarine and Incomplete Beyond).

The "Light-novel Anime" project's short anime are being released in parts as vertical anime made for smartphones. The first two works, "Shōshin Time Leap" and "Femme Fatale Ikusei Keikaku," had been released earlier in June as YouTube Shorts.

The works are also being re-edited for horizontal screens for television broadcast, and will air as the program Shūkan Ranobe Anime, starting on July 12 in the Animazing!!! programming block on ABC TV, TV Asahi, and their affiliates.

The four works include (note, character name romanizations are not official):

Title: "Shōshin Time Leap" (Heartbreak Time Leap)

Staff:

Original Work, Series Composition, Script: nigozyu (The Detective Is Already Dead)
Character Design: tanu (Tari Tari)
Director: Tomoyasu Murata
Script Cooperation: Fumiaki Maruto
Literature Supervision: Takeshi Hagiwara
Sound Director: Fumihiko Ōtera
Main Theme: Misaki Umase
Production: Ziine studio

Cast:

Tomoyo Takayanagi as Miri Wakana
Shōgo Sakata as Takashi Wase
Miyari Nemoto as Miyako Anami
Reiji Kawashima as Ren Ashiya

Summary: On her final Christmas in high school, Miri confesses to her classmate Takashi, but he rejects her. In her despair, she clings to a past diary. The diary envelops her in light, and Miri finds herself transported six months in the past. She uses this chance, and repeated time leaps, to try to change her future, and find out the reason why Takashi rejected her confession.

Title: "Femme Fatale Ikusei Keikaku" (Femme Fatale Raising Project)

Staff:

Original Work and Series Composition: Natsu Hyūga (The Apothecary Diaries)
Character Design: Kamoku Okeno (Mizu Mahō Gurai Shika Torie ga Nai kedo, Gendai Chishiki ga Areba Jūbun da yo ne?)
Director: Masayuki Kitamura, Kazuya Shiraishi
Script: Ougyo Kawagishi
Literature Supervision: Takeshi Hagiwara
Sound Director: Tōru Nakano
Main Theme: Misaki Umase
Production: Ziine studio

Cast:

Daiki Yamashita as Hiroki Adagawa
Yūya Hirose as Yamada
Yusuke Shirai as Suzuki
Saho Shirasu as Kazane Kurahashi
Satsumi Matsuda as Tsukino Kurahashi
Reina Kondo as Yukiko Kurahashi
Sayumi Suzushiro as Asagi Hiyama
Tatsumaru Tachibana as Narrator

Summary: Hiroki is a high school student who is well liked and chubby. After his cute cousin Tsukino is dumped by her ex-boyfriend, Hiroki decides, "I'll become a beautiful woman and make him fall in love with me, and then dump him!" He recruits friends and allies to help him go on a diet and transform into a femme fatale and avenge his cousin.

Title: "Jack the Reaper"

Staff:

Original Work: Tappei Nagatsuki (Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-)
Character Design: Minori Chigusa (Convenient Semi-Friend)
Director: Daisuke Nakano
Series Composition, Script: Usagi Usaki
Literature Supervision: Takeshi Hagiwara
Sound Director: Tōru Nakano
Main Theme: Misaki Umase
Production: Ziine studio

Cast:

Kaito Ishikawa as Gokurō Tokishiro
Kaede Hondo as Komachi Nadazaka
Kento Hama as Hayato Yazukibaya
Hinata Tadokoro as Iwao Kendō
Nanako Mori as Mirei Jūmanishi

Summary: A man wakes up one day in an interrogation room, with no memory of who he is and why he's there. Before him appears a young female detective. She eventually gets angry with the interrogation and storms out, but an intruder comes in and stabs the man to death. The next moment, he's "back" in the interrogation room.

Title: "Marie Antoinette ni Tensei Shita node, Zenryoku de Guillotine wo Kaihi Shimasu" (Reborn as Marie Antoinette, I'll Give it My All to Avoid the Guillotine)

Staff:

Original Work, Series Composition, Script: Shōko Amano (Yorozu Uranai Dokoro: Onmyōya e Yōkoso)
Character Design: Takuya Fujima (R-15, Warlords of Sigrdrifa Rusalka)
Director: Kaoruko Murakami
Literature Supervision: Takeshi Hagiwara
Sound Director: Tōru Nakano
Main Theme: Misaki Umase
Production: Ziine studio

Cast:

Fairouz Ai as Antoinette
Toshiki Masuda as Louis
Shunichi Toki as Charles
Takeo Ōtsuka as Stanislas
Masumi Tazawa as Madame du Barry

Summary: A female Otaku from the present day is reincarnated as Marie Antoinette. She refuses to let her future execution play out, so she uses her knowhow as an Otaku and her passion to win over the masses — by turning Louis XVI and his brothers into an idol group.

Sources: ABC Animation's website, Comic Natalie