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Sakura Wars: Kanadegumi's Anime, Stage Play Casts Revealed

This year's 18th issue of Hakusensha's shōjo magazine Hana to Yume is revealing on Monday the casts for both the anime and stage play based on the Sakura Taisen: Kanadegumi (Sakura Wars: Performing Division) manga:

Anime

• Yoshimasa Hosoya as Hugo Julliard
• Satoshi Hino as G.O. Bach
• Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Genji Tōhō
• Yūki Kaji as Genzaburō Tōhō
• Shinnosuke Tachibana as Francisco Louis Astorga

The limited first edition of Chie Shimada's first Sakura Taisen: Kanadegumi manga volume will bundle the anime DVD on September 20. The DVD will contain an anime promotional video (about 150 seconds long), a voice drama with a manga slide show (about 18 minutes long), and a roundtable discussion with the main cast (about 14 minutes).

Stage Play

• Marina Tanoue (Lion King) as Neko Miyabi
• Kazuki Watanabe (Blue Exorcist) as Hugo Julliard
• Yūya Miyagaki (Elisabeth) as G.O. Bach
• Hiraku Kuramoto (Carnation) as Genji Tōhō
• Hidemasa Shiozawa (The Prince of Tennis) as Genzaburō Tōhō
• Kento Ono (Tensō Sentai Goseiger) as Francisco Louis Astorga

The play will run from November 1 to November 11.

Sakura Taisen: Kanadegumi follows the young woman Neko's relationship with five attractive young men. The story takes place in Tokyo and centers on an imperial opera company named Kanadegumi. The manga launched in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume shōjo magazine last November as a two-chapter manga, but then became a regular series this past February.

Since its debut over 15 years ago, Sakura Wars has been a dating simulation/tactical role-playing game franchise aimed primarily at male gamers. The previous entries in the franchise followed the alternate-history adventures of several all-female mechanized task forces — that also perform musicals to maintain their top secret cover. The games' voice actresses reprised their roles in real-life stage musicals that lasted long after the main game series ended.

[Via amyyi, teni_arj, Hachima Kikō]