News

HIDIVE Streams Chihayafuru Anime 3rd Season's English Dub

HIDIVE announced on Friday that it will stream the English dub for Chihayafuru 3, the third Chihayafuru anime season, starting on July 30 at 1:00 p.m. EDT in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavian countries, Central America, and South America. New dub episodes will premiere on Fridays.

The English dub cast includes:

• Luci Christian as Chihaya, Young Chihaya
• Blake Shepard as Arata
• Adam Gibbs as Taichi
• Bryson Baugus as Desktomu
• Juliet Simmons as Kanade
• Greg Ayres as Porky, Yukari
• Maggie Flecknoe as Sumire
• Gareth West as Akihito
• James Belcher as Dr. Harada
• Vicki Barosh as Mrs. Miyauchi
• Shannon Emerick as Young Arata
• Chelsea McCurdy as Young Taichi

Jonathan Rodriguez, Patrick Marrero are the audio engineers for the English dub. Joel McCray is the ADR writer. Katrina Leonoudakis is the translator. Brent Marshall is the mix engineer.

Sentai Filmworks licensed Chihayafuru 3 and will release it on home video on July 27.

The season premiered in October 2019. Crunchyroll has streamed the series as it aired in Japan. Crunchyroll Expo hosted a premiere screening for the anime in August 2019.

The new season was slated to premiere in April 2019 on NTV's "AnichU" programming block, but was delayed to October 2019.

Morio Asaka returned to direct the anime at Madhouse. 99RadioService, who performed the opening themes for both previous seasons, returned to perform the new opening song "COLORFUL." band harassment performed the ending theme song "Hitomebore" (Love at First Sight).

The first 25-episode television anime season ran from October 2011 to March 2012. The second season, Chihayafuru 2, premiered in January 2013 and also ran for 25 episodes. Crunchyroll streamed both seasons in several countries as they aired in Japan. Sentai Filmworks released both seasons with an English dub on home video. HIDIVE is also streaming the first season with Japanese subtitles and an English dub.

Sentai Filmworks describes the story:

Chihaya Ayase is a beautiful and headstrong young woman with a passion for karuta, a card game inspired by classical Japanese poetry. As a child, Chihaya was introduced to the game by a quiet, gifted transfer student named Arata, and she was instantly drawn to it. Now in high school and reunited with her childhood friend Taichi, Chihaya dreams of finding Arata and the three resuming their love of karuta, only to discover that Arata has quit the game due to personal reasons. Determined not to let Arata's passion go to waste, Chihaya and Taichi form the Mizusawa High School Karuta Club, where they learn that in karuta - as in life - working toward your dreams is the key to winning, even when what you want seems just out of reach.

Suetsugu launched the manga in Kodansha's Be Love magazine in December 2007. Kodansha Comics is releasing the manga digitally in English.

Suetsugu's manga has also inspired three live-action films. The first film, Chihayafuru: Kami no Ku (Chihayafuru: Upper Phrase), opened in Japan in March 2016. The second film, Chihayafuru: Shimo no Ku (Chihayafuru: Lower Phrase), opened in Japan in April 2016. The third film, Chihayafuru: Musubi, opened in Japan in March 2018. A five-episode live-action tie-in series, titled Chihayafuru -Tsunagu-, premiered on Hulu Japan in February 2018.

Source: HIDIVE