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Fune wo Amu/The Great Passage Anime's 1st Trailer Streamed

The official website for the television anime adaptation of Shion Miura's The Great Passage (Fune wo Amu or lit. To Compile A Ship) novel began streaming the anime's first promotional video on Friday.

The series follows the employees at the Genbu Shobō publishing company. Araki, who is a veteran editor for the dictionary department, is looking for a successor now that he's approaching retirement age. After Majime Mitsuya — a salesman who's a poor talker — meets Masashi Nishioka — Araki's coworker who is sociable and frivolous — Araki overhears their conversation and decides to recruit Majime into the department. The story follows "the awkward humans" Majime and Masashi as they work together to compile a medium-sized Japanese dictionary titled "The Great Passage" (Daitokai).

The show stars:

Takahiro Sakurai as Mitsuya Majime. He's a salesman in the first sales department at the Genbu Shobō publishing company. Even though he's a salesman, he has a hard time conveying his thoughts in words to others. Starting with his meeting with Masashi, his language abilities begin to grow.

Hiroshi Kamiya as Masashi Nishioka. He works for Genbu Shobō's dictionary editorial department. As his looks imply, he's quite frivolous. He has great communication skills, but he has no interest in compiling a dictionary. When he meets Mitsuya by chance in a bookstore, his skill at compiling a dictionary starts to manifest.

Maaya Sakamoto as Kaguya Hayashi, a woman studying to be a chef. She is the granddaughter of Granny Take, who is the landlady of the building Mitsuya lives in. Kaguya also lives in the building, and begins to take an interest in Mitsuya.

Haruko Kumota (Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū original manga creator) is in charge of the original character designs for the series. Toshimasa Kuroyanagi (Say, "I Love You". series director, Shōnen Hollywood - Holly Stage for 49, Shōnen Hollywood - Holly Stage for 50 director) is directing the series at ZEXCS. Takuya Satō (Say, "I Love You"., Strawberry Marshmallow, Fate/stay night) is handling the series composition, and Hiroyuki Aoyama (key animator for Summer Wars, Sword of the Stranger) is adapting Kumota's character designs for animation.

The anime will premiere on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block in October.

Miura's novel originally shipped in 2011, and it inspired an award-winning live-action film directed by Yuya Ishii that opened in Japan in 2013. The film won the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year in 2013.