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Sword Gai: The Animation Reveals Main Cast, New Visual
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
The official website for Sword Gai: The Animation, the anime adaptation of Toshiki Inoue, Osamu Kine, and Keita Amamiya's Sword Gai manga, revealed on Friday that Yūichirō Umehara, Yūto Uemura, Yuka Aisaka will star in the series. The roles are (from left to right in image below) Umehara as Seiya Ichijō, the strongest man in a mysterious organization who is like an older brother to Gai; Uemura as protagonist Gai Ogata; and Aisaka as Sayaka Ogata, Gai's childhood friend who supports him like a mother.
The website also revealed a new visual for the anime.
The anime series will exclusively stream worldwide on Netflix next spring. The anime's first episode premiered at Tokyo Comic Con, which was held at Chiba's Makuhari Messe convention center from December 1-3.
Takahiro Ikezoe (Show By Rock!! director) is serving as chief director while Tomohito Naka (New Theatrical Movie Initial D Legend 2: Racer) is directing. Original writer Toshiki Inoue is handling series composition. Atsuko Nakajima (Getbackers) is designing the characters, Toshiki Kameyama (Nisekoi) is the sound director, and Kōtarō Nakagawa (Code Geass) is composing the music. LandQ studios is listed as the primary animation production company along with DLE Inc. and Production I.G.
Other staff members include:
- Art Director: Seiko Akashi
- 3D Directors: Akihiko Kimura, Kenji Isobe
- Color design: Masato Sasaki
Monthly Hero's Magazine originally announced the anime in 2014. At the time, the announcement noted that the anime would be a collaboration between Flash anime studio DLE Inc. (Eagle Talon, Thermae Romae) and entertainment content company Fields.
The story revolves around Gai, who was born beside a woman who met her death in a forest. He was adopted by the swordsmith Amon. A few years later, Gai becomes Amon's apprentice, and during the forging of a sword, he loses his right arm. To help him, Amon crushes the demon sword Shiryū (lit. Death Dragon) to form it into Gai's replacement right arm. Gai then is able to fuse with the weapon on his arm, and fights against his enemies.
Inoue (Kamen Rider 555, Kamen Rider Agito, Chōjin Sentai Jetman, Chaos;HEAd series composition, screenplay) wrote the manga's story, while Osamu Kine drew the manga from original character designs by Keita Amemiya (Garo creator/director, Zeiram character design). The manga began serializing in the December 2012 issue of Monthly Hero's Magazine, and ended in October 2015. Shogakukan published six volumes for the series. A sequel series, titled Sword Gai Evolve and with the same creative staff, launched in Monthly Hero's Magazine in November 2015, and is currently ongoing. Shogakukan published the manga's third compiled book volume on June 5.
The manga already inspired a 3D CG promotional video by Digital Frontier (Wolf Children production, Summer Wars 3D graphics) in 2013.
Source: The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
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