News

Major 2nd Anime's 2nd Season Postpones New Episodes Due to COVID-19

The official Twitter account for NHK's anime programming announced on Saturday that future episodes of the second anime series of Takuya Mitsuda's Major 2nd baseball manga are delayed, as the staff have suspended production of the anime due to the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The staff will announce at a later date when the anime will return. NHK Educational will rebroadcast the anime's first four episodes starting next week.

The anime premiered on April 4 on NHK Educational. Ayumu Watanabe returns as director at OLM, with returning writer Michihiro Tsuchiya in charge of series scripts. Tsuchiya is also penning the scripts alongside returning writers Kenichi Yamashita and Kenji Konuta, with Akiko Inoue joining the scriptwriting team. Miki Matsumoto (Angels of Death) is the new character designer, replacing Kenichi Ohnuki. Toshiki Kameyama is the sound director. Kotaro Nakagawa returns as composer for the music. Singer-songwriter Leo Ieiri performs the opening theme song "Answer." Four-member piano rock band SHE'S performs the anime's ending theme song "One."

The sequel manga inspired an animated commercial in December 2015, and a television anime adaptation premiered in April 2018. Crunchyroll streamed the first anime series as it aired in Japan, and it describes the story:

Shigeno Daigo is an elementary school student whose father, Goro, is a professional baseball player. Inspired by his father, who was once a Major League player, Daigo started playing baseball with the Mifune Dolphins, a youth league team. He was unable to live up to the expectations of being the son of a professional, however, and quit baseball after less than a year. Then, in the spring of his sixth-grade year, Daigo's school welcomes a transfer student who's just returned from America. The transfer student is Sato Hikaru, and it turns out his father is Sato Toshiya, a former Major League player and Goro's close friend. The fate of these two young men begins to move forward!

Mitsuda launched the manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday in March 2015 as the first new installment in the manga series in five years.

Source: NHK Anime's Twitter account