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Gurazeni Baseball Anime Gets 2nd Season in October

The official website for the television anime of Yūji Moritaka and Keiji Adachi's Gurazeni baseball manga revealed on Friday that a second season will premiere on BS SkaPer! (SKY PerfecTV!) in October. The website also began streaming a trailer for the second season.

Ayumu Watanabe (Space Brothers, Doraemon: Boku no Umareta Hi, If Her Flag Breaks) will return to direct the second season, and Hideo Takayashiki (Kaiji, One Outs, Rideback) will return to handle series composition and write the scripts.

The final episode of the anime's first season debuted on Friday. Actor and director Takeshi Kitano, former professional baseball player Masahiro Yamamoto, and comedian Yūki Iwai guest starred in the episode.

The Gurazeni anime premiered on April 6, and Crunchyroll is streaming the series under the title Gurazeni: Money Pitch as it airs in Japan.

Watanabe directed the first anime at Studio DEEN, while Takayashiki supervised and wrote the series scripts. Kenichi Ohnuki (Major, Gundam Build Fighters, Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters) designed the characters.

The "baseball money survival" story focuses on a baseball team that operates as a highly-stratified society, where the player's performance determines his annual salary. The story follows an eight-year relief pitcher with an odd left-handed side-arm throw as he fights to survive under the team's strict system.

Writer Moritaka and artist Adachi began serializing the series in 2010. The manga won the best general manga award in the 37th Kodansha Manga Awards in 2013. The series also ranked #2 on the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook's 2012 list, and earned a nomination in the 5th Manga Taisho Awards.

The manga series ended in 2014 with 17 volumes, but the creators launched the Gurazeni: Tokyo Dome-hen sequel manga that same year. Tokyo Dome-hen ended in February, but a new series titled Gurazeni: Pa League-hen launched on March 29.

Sources: Gurazeni anime's website and Twitter account, Comic Natalie