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Major 2nd Anime's 2nd Series Reveals New Cast, Staff, April 4 Premiere

The official Twitter account for the second anime series of Takuya Mitsuda's Major 2nd baseball manga revealed new cast members, staff members, a visual, and the anime's April 4 premiere date on NHK Educational on Thursday. Daiki Yamashita joins the cast as the cocksure rookie Akira nishina, joining returning cast members Natsumi Fujiwara and Kana Hanazawa.

Ayumu Watanabe returns as director at OLM, with returning writer Michihiro Tsuchiya in charge of series scripts. Tsuchiya is also penning the scripts alongside returning writers Kenichi Yamashita and Kenji Konuta, with Akiko Inoue joining the scriptwriting team. Miki Matsumoto (Angels of Death) is the new character designer, replacing Kenichi Ohnuki. Toshiki Kameyama is the sound director. Kōtarō Nakagawa returns as composer for the music.

The sequel manga inspired an animated commercial in December 2015, and a television anime adaptation premiered in April 2018. Crunchyroll streamed the first anime series as it aired in Japan, and it describes the story:

Shigeno Daigo is an elementary school student whose father, Goro, is a professional baseball player. Inspired by his father, who was once a Major League player, Daigo started playing baseball with the Mifune Dolphins, a youth league team. He was unable to live up to the expectations of being the son of a professional, however, and quit baseball after less than a year. Then, in the spring of his sixth-grade year, Daigo's school welcomes a transfer student who's just returned from America. The transfer student is Sato Hikaru, and it turns out his father is Sato Toshiya, a former Major League player and Goro's close friend. The fate of these two young men begins to move forward!

Mitsuda launched the manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday in March 2015 as the first new installment in the manga series in five years. Shogakukan shipped the manga's 17th volume last October. The manga returned from a five-month hiatus in April 2018.

Mitsuda serialized the first Major manga series in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1994 until 2010. Shogakukan published 78 compiled book volumes for the series. The story begins when Goro Honda's father, a professional baseball player, dies in an accident. This gives him the motivation to try and become a pro baseball player himself.

The first Major manga inspired its first television anime series in 2004, and the sixth television anime series ran in 2010. The manga also inspired an anime film titled Major: Yūjō no Winning Shot in 2008.

Source: Major 2nd anime's Twitter account and website, Comic Natalie