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Kenichi Suzumura Cast as Nao Matsubara in Ace of Diamond: 2nd Season Anime
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
This year's 27th issue of Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine will announce on Wednesday that Kenichi Suzumura (Uta no Prince Sama's Masato Hijirikawa, The Garden of Sinners' Mikiya Kokutō) will play the character Nao Matsubara in the Ace of Diamond: Second Season TV anime series.
The magazine describes the character as "the brains of Ugumori High School." In the original manga, Matsubara is the manager of Ugumori High School's baseball team.
The new season premiered on TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TV Hokkaido, TV Setouchi, and TVQ Kyushu Broadcasting on April 6 at 6:00 p.m., and airs every Monday in the same time slot. Other channels are also running the new season, and Niconico and other services are also streaming the anime. Crunchyroll is streaming the anime as it airs in Japan.
Crunchyroll describes the story:
I want to pitch to that mitt again... A meeting with catcher Kazuya Miyuki changed the 15-year-old eijun Sawamura's life. He said goodbye to all his friends and knocked upon the door of Seidou, a prestigious baseball school, intent on testing his own strength. There, he met many proud baseball players who were betting everything on the sport! A classic tale, yet new and fresh. All the emotion and excitement of the popular baseball manga is at last coming to television in the form of an anime!
The story of Yūji Terajima's original manga begins with eijun Sawamura (Ryota Ohsaka), a pitcher who joins an elite school with a brilliant catcher named Kazuya Miyuki (Takahiro Sakurai). Together with the rest of the team, they strive for Japan's storied Kōshien championships through hard work and determination. The anime also stars Hiro Shimono as Norifumi Kawakami, Hiroki Touchi as Tesshin Kataoka, Masakazu Morita as Kōchirō Tanba, Nobuyuki Hiyama as Kyokuni Azuma, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Shinji Kanemaru, and Yumi Uchiyama as Rei Takashima.
Tom-H@ck and Masayoshi Ōishi are contributing the ending theme song for the second season, and the rock band Glay is also returning to contribute the opening theme song.
The first Ace of Diamond anime season premiered in 2013 in Japan, and Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired. The manga also inspired an original anime DVD last November.
Terajima launched the manga in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2006, and the manga won the shōnen category of the 34th Kodansha Manga Awards in 2010.
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