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On Feb. 1, the four voice actors playing the main characters of the TV anime The Heroic Legend of Arslan to begin airing in April were announced along with the broadcast start day. A large update was also made to the production staff adding to the previously announced director, series composer, and character designer. This new information was announced in a commercial broadcast during The Seven Deadly Sins on Feb. 1 at 17:00 on 28 MBS/TBS networks. It has been confirmed that the anime will take over this time slot beginning in April. The first broadcast will be on April 5. This is a large-scale series for early spring 2015.
The cast includes Yusuke Kobayashi as main character Arslan, crown prince of the kingdom of Pars, and joining him is a solid cast that includes Yoshimasa Hosoya as Daryun, his loyal servant, and Daisuke Namikawa as strategist Narsus. Playing the young boy Elam, who is in service to Narsus, is Natsuki Hanae. It seems fans’ anticipation will rise for a magnificent drama by these actors. The commercial also showed the first anime visual with these four characters in it. The lively characters of Hiromu Arakawa’s manga are being freely capitalized on.
On the production staff side, a highlight is that the animation is being created by Liden Films and Sanzigen. Liden Films has gained recent attention for Terra Formars and Cardfight!! Vanguard Movie: Neon Messiah. Sanzigen is known for its full CG work as can be seen in Arpeggio of Blue Steel - Ars Nova. These two studios have worked together previously as well. A film that highlights this is Initial D the Movie: Legend 1 - Awakening on which Liden Films worked on the characters and Sanzigen worked on the racing scenes. Because of its many action scenes, a highlight of this new project will be how it is expressed by both these studios.
The Heroic Legend of Arslan is a manga adaptation by Hiromu Arakawa of Yoshiki Tanaka’s masterpiece fantasy novel. It began serialization in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine (Kodansha) in summer 2013. The manga already has more than 1 million copies in print with only two volumes published so far. Volume 3 will be released on Monday, Feb. 9.
Manga: Hiromu Arakawa (serialized in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Shonen Magazine
Original Work: Yoshiki Tanaka (published by Kobunsha Kappa Novels)
Director: Noriyuki Abe
Series Composer: Makoto Uezu
Chief Character Designer: Shingo Ogiso
[Main Cast]
Arslan: Yusuke Kobayashi
Daryun: Yoshimasa Hosoya
Narsus: Daisuke Namikawa
Elam: Natsuki Hanae
Source: animeanime
