News
Love All Play Badminton Anime Casts Kishō Taniyama, Hiroki Takahashi
posted on by Egan Loo
The official website for the television anime of Asami Koseki's Love All Play badminton novel revealed two more cast members on Saturday. The newly announced cast members voice the star players in the protagonist Ryō Mizushima's badminton team. These two characters debut in the anime's second episode on April 9:
Hiroki Takahashi as Yūsuke Yokokawa, Yusa's doubles partner, whom the younger players consider a big-brother figure they can count on for advice
The anime premiered on April 2. The anime airs on YTV, NTV, and their affiliates on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m.
The main cast includes:
- Natsuki Hanae as Ryō Mizushima
- Yohei Azakami as Shōhei Sakaki
- Makoto Furukawa as Kо̄ki Matsuda
- Kensho Ono as Taichi Higashiyama
- Tetsuya Kakihara as Yо̄ji Higashiyama
- Yuuki Kaji as Akira Uchida
- Minako Kotobuki as Rika Mizushima
- Kazuya Nakai as Hitoshi Ebihara
- Masaya Matsukaze as Shizuo Nakano
- Shimba Tsuchiya as Hirohito Monda
Additionally, real-life badminton players Yūta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino will appear in the anime playing themselves.
The story follows Ryō Mizushima, who joined his middle school's badminton team full of motivation — but without a proper coach, ended up in obscurity. Nevertheless, he did eventually reach the prefectural tournament on his physical strength. Now he joins the prestigious Yokohama-Minato High School's badminton team under the legendary coach Ebihara and is surrounded by talented teammates. He strives to become a top athlete and take his high school team to the inter-high tournament.
Hiroshi Takeuchi (Peacemaker Kurogane: Belief storyboarder, Blade & Soul, Zunda Horizon) is directing the anime at Nippon Animation and OLM. Tomoko Konparu (Uta no Prince-sama - Maji Love 1000%, Nodame Cantabile) is supervising the series scripts and writing them with Miharu Hirami (Kodocha, The New Adventures of Kimba The White Lion), Shingo Irie (All Out!!, Kuroko's Basketball), and Michiko Yokote (Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Genshiken, Shirobako). Riko Kaneda is designing the characters, and Yuki Hayashi (My Hero Academia, Welcome to the Ballroom, Shaman King) is composing the music.
Sporting goods maker Yonex is supervising and collaborating on the designs for the anime. Yonex assisted on a previous badminton anime, Hanebad! from 2018.
Poplar's Pureful imprint published the first Love All Play novel in May 2011, and Koseki has since written three more follow-up novels. The anime is also getting a manga adaptation by Dam Miyata on Shueisha's Tonari no Young Jump website.
Sources: Love All Play anime's website, Comic Natalie
