News

The Piano Forest TV Anime Gets Netflix-Only Streaming With Release Outside Japan Slated for this Fall

The official website for the television anime of Makoto Isshiki's Piano no Mori (The Piano Forest) manga announced on Friday Netflix is exclusively streaming the anime. Netflix will debut new episodes inside Japan immediately after they air on NHK. Netflix plans to release all the episodes at once in more than 190 countries outside of Japan "around this fall." Netflix is streaming the first episode in Japan now with the title Forest of Piano.

The anime premiered on NHK on April 8 at 12:10 a.m. (effectively April 9 morning). NHK is listing the series with 12 episodes.

The anime stars:

• Sōma Saitō as Kai Ichinose
• Ryoko Shiraishi as Kai Ichinose (child)
• Natsuki Hanae as Shūhei Amamiya
• Yō Taichi as Shūhei Amaiya (child)
• Junichi Suwabe as Sōsuke Ajino
• Yūichi Nakamura as Pang Wei
• Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Kōsei Hirata
• Maaya Sakamoto as Reiko Ichinose
• KENN as Lech Szymanowski
• Aoi Yūki as Takako Maruyama
• Mariya Ise as Sophie Ormesson
• Katsuyuki Konishi as Karol Adamski
• Kōji Yusa as Takeshi Saga
• Hiroshi Yanaka as Kōtarō Shiba
• Marie Miyake as Namie Amamiya
• Ryō Hirohashi as Arisa
• Motoko Kumai as Daigaku Kanehira
• Hideyuki Tanaka as Yōichirō Amamiya
• Bin Shimada as Jean-Jacques Theroux

The manga follows two boys from different walks of life. Kai was born the son of a prostitute and learned to play an abandoned piano in the forest by his home. Shūhei is child of two prestigious pianists. The two boys end up meeting through their one common thread: music.

Gaku Nakatani (Madagascar 3 CG supervisor) is directing the anime at Fukushima Gainax. Aki Itami (Flowers of Evil, Mushi-Shi, Rainbow Days) and Mika Abe (Danchi Tomoo) are in charge of series composition. Sumie Kinoshita (Girlish Number, A Sister's All You Need) is designing the characters, and is also credited as chief animation director.

Aoi Yūki (Saga of Tanya the Evil, Hakumei and Mikochi) is performing the ending theme song "Kaeru Basho ga Aru to Iu Koto" (To Have a Place to Come Home to).

The pianists, and the characters they will perform pieces for, include Kyohei Sorita (Sōsuke Ajino), Takagi Ryoma (Shūhei Amamiya), Niu Niu (Wei Pang), Szymon Nehring (Lech Szymanowski), and Juliette Journaux (Sophie Ormesson). The anime will also feature performances by junior pianists Kotone Uehara, Modan Oyama, Kamuro Sahara, and Ayano Baba to portray the performances of the show's main characters Kai, Shūhei, or Takako in their childhood years. Nippon Columbia hosted an audition for the junior pianists.

Thanks to Craig Henry for the news tip.