×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

News
Love All Play Badminton Anime Casts Real-Life Badminton Players

posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Yūta Watanabe, Arisa Higashino play themselves in April anime

The official website for the television anime of Asami Koseki's Love All Play badminton novel revealed on Tuesday that real-life badminton players Yūta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino will appear in the anime playing themselves.


The anime will premiere on April 2. The anime will air on YTV, NTV, and their affiliates on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m.

Natsuki Hanae stars in the anime as as Ryō Mizushima. The other main cast includes:

Yōhei 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

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, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web


discuss this in the forum (1 post) |
bookmark/share with: short url

this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history

News homepage / archives