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Wake Up, Girls! Shin Shō Anime Reveals 3 New Cast Members Who Also Form Real-Life Idol Unit
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The official website for the Wake Up, Girls! franchise revealed three new characters and voice actresses on Sunday who will appear in the upcoming Wake Up, Girls! Shin Shō (Wake Up, Girls! New Chapter) television anime series.
The new cast members and characters are:
Koko Hayashi as Ayumi Hayashi
Yūka Morishima as Otome Morishima
Nanami Atsugi as Itsuka Atsugi
The three new girls comprise the new in-show idol unit "Run Girls, Run!" As with the Wake Up, Girls! idol unit, Run Girls, Run! will also form an idol unit in real life. The three voice actresses won the roles from the "Avex x 81 Produce Wake Up, Girls! Audition Dai-3-Kai Anisong Vocal Audition" earlier this year. Avex Pictures also opened a website for the new unit, and began streaming a dancing video on Sunday featuring group.
The anime will premiere in Japan in October on TV Tokyo, Sendai Broadcasting, and AT-X.
Shin Itagaki (Wake Up, Girls! episode 10 storyboards, Teekyū) is replacing Yutaka Yamamoto as the director of the new anime, and Miyuki Sugawara is replacing Sunao Chikaoka as the character designer, although Chikaoka is still credited for the original character designs. Similarly, Millepensee is replacing Ordet as the main animation studio. Satoru Kousaki and monaca are returning to compose the music at DIVE II Entertainment, and the original story and scripts are credited to "Green Leaves." The new anime will feature the previous Wake Up, Girls! group members, and also new characters. The Wake Up, Girls! idol group are performing the opening theme song "7 Senses" and the ending theme song "Shizuku no Kan" (Drop's Crown) for the series.
Famitsu's Comic Clear website launched a manga titled Wake Up, Girls! Eternal Senses on Sunday. GUNP is drawing the manga with supervision by Green Leaves.
In the story of the original anime, Green Leaves Entertainment is a tiny production company on the verge of going out of business in Sendai, the biggest city in Japan's northeastern Tohoku region. The agency once managed the careers of magicians, photo idols, fortune-tellers, and other entertainers, but its last remaining client finally quit. In danger of having zero talent (literally), the president Tange hatches an idea of producing an idol group. On the brash president's orders, the dissatisfied manager Matsuda heads out to scout raw talent. Matsuda makes a fateful encounter with a certain girl…
The first television anime premiered in Japan in January 2014 along with a limited theatrical run. Crunchyroll streamed the series outside of Japan. Two sequel films, Wake Up, Girls! Seishun no Kage and Wake Up, Girls! Beyond the Bottom, opened in 2015. Sentai Filmworks released Wake Up, Girls!: The Movie and the television series on home video last year.
Additionally, an original net anime spinoff titled Wake Up, Girl Zoo! premiered in 2014. Crunchyroll also streamed that spinoff series. The voice actresses from the show also reprised their roles in a stage play that ran in January. The real-life idol group has also performed theme songs for anime.
Source: Famitsu
