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Ō-sama Game Horror Novel Gets TV Anime in October

This year's 16th issue of Futabasha's Manga Action magazine is revealing on Tuesday that Nobuaki Kanazawa's Ōsama Game (King's Game) cellphone novel is getting a television anime adaptation that will premiere in October.

The anime's cast is as follows:

• Mamoru Miyano as Nobuaki Kanazawa
• Shinya Hamazoe as Shingo Adachi
• Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Toshiyuki Abe
• Miyuu Tsuji as Satomi Ishii
• Suguru Narisawa as Hirofumi Inoue
• Pile as Ria Iwamura
• Yūma Uchida as Yōsuke Ueda
• Yui Makino as Kana Ueda
• Fukushi Ochiai as Akira Ōno
• Kimito Totani as Yūsuke Kawakami
• Ami Fukushima as chia Kawano
• Konomi Yūzaki as Akemi Kinoshita
• Yuka Ōtsubo as Mami Shirokawa
• Hisayoshi Suganuma as Daisuke Tasaki
• Kenji Akabane as Hideki Toyoda
• Mirai Sasaki as Minako Nakao
• Risa Yuzuki as Misaki Nakajima
• Shinnosuke Tachibana as Naoya Hashimoto
• Minori Suzuki as Nami Hirano
• Kōdai Sakai as Toshiyuki Fujioka
• M.A.O as Chiemi Honda
• Mariko Honda as Kaori Maruoka
• Misaki Suzuki as Emi Miyazaki
• Shūta Morishima as Shōta Yashiro
• Miya Amamiya as Hiroko Yamaguchi
• Yui Nagano as Keita Yamashita
• Yūsuke Sasaki as Kenta Akamatsu
• Yū Sanada as Masatoshi Ōi
• Saki Fujita as Aya Kuramoto
• Hitoshi Horinouchi as DAIKI Kurosawa
• Ai Nakajima as Yūna Kobayashi
• Hayato Horiuchi as Toshifumi Sakakibara
• Satoshi Hino as Takuya Sakamoto
• Tatsuhisa Suzuki as Yuichi Sato
• Yuusuke Tonozaki as Tatsuya Shinba
• Hiroyuki Kagura as Ryō Sugisawa
• Makoto Takada as Shin Takada
• Rie Hanafusa as Nanami Takumi
• Ryōta Suzuki as Teruaki Nagata
• Masashi Uchida as Tsubasa Furusawa
• Yui Horie as Natsuko Honda
• Yuka Ozaki as Aya Matsuoka
• Akari Uehara as Riona Matsumoto
• Kana Yūki as Rina Minami
• Ibuki Kido as Aimi Murazumi
• Kazusa Aranami as Haruka Momoki
• Suzuna Kinoshita as Mitsuki Yukimura

The original novel's story begins when an entire high school class of 32 people receive a message on their cellphones from a person known only as the "King." The messages contain orders that the students must obey, or they risk the punishment of death. With their lives on the line, the students soon find out that the orders are getting more and more extreme as time goes on.

Futabasha published the original cellphone novel in tankōbon format in 12 volumes from 2009 to 2015, and also in larger bunkoban format in the same number of volumes from 2011 to February 19 earlier this year. Futabasha is also releasing a new edition of the novels with its Futabasha Junior Bunko label, with illustrations by Chiba. The sixth and latest volume in that re-release shipped on March 15.

The story has also inspired four manga adaptations. The first manga by Hitori Renda ran on Futabasha's Everystar Premium online service from 2011 to 2012, and received five volumes. The second manga by Renji Kuriyama, titled Ousama Game: Shūkyoku, ran on Everystar Premium from 2012 to 2014, and received four volumes. The third manga by J-ta Yamada, titled Ousama Game: Kigen, ran in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine from 2014 to 2016, and received six volumes. Crunchyroll released chapters of the manga online under the title King's Game: Origin (seen above left). The fourth manga, again by Kuriyama, is titled Ousama Game: Rinjō, and it ran from 2015 to last November. Futabasha published the manga's fourth and final volume last November.

The game inspired a live-action film adaptation that opened in Japan in December 2011. A smartphone social game adaptation and tie-in to the film was also released in November 2011.