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Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan: The Ultimate Battles Franchise Gets 2nd TV Anime in April
posted on by Egan Loo
Gakken's children's book series Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan is inspiring a second television anime, Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan: The Ultimate Tournament, which will premiere next April on the TV Tokyo channel and its affiliates.
The setting of the new anime is "Sai-Kyō-Jima" (The Ultimate Island), a mysterious isolated island with countless unexplored battlefields from wildernesses and rocky crags to forests, ice fields, and caverns. Here, players from various species such as otherwise extinct animals, bugs, and dinosaurs wage tournament-style battles, all to lay claim to the title of the strongest. Besides previously introduced creatures such as the Tyrannosaurus, Purussaurus, lion, and Hercules beetle, the new anime adds more species which battle to be the ultimate one, such as marine creatures and dragons.
The original children's book series has 5.4 million copies in circulation, and it will mark its 10th anniversary next year.
Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan: The Ultimate Battles, the franchise's first television anime which was based on the Ishu Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan book, premiered on January 6 on TV Tokyo within the Iniminimanimo program. It starred Yoshihisa Kawahara as Mr. Most.
The Gakken editorial department and Tetsuya Meguro supervised the first television anime. Kunihiko Yuyama (Pokémon chief director) was the chief director, and Shintarō Kishimoto (tough guys!) directed the anime at OLM Digital. Shinji Satō (The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made) oversaw the series scripts. Toonz Imai designed the characters, Kisuke Koizumi directed the sound, and Yusuke Kamimachi composed the music.
Aeon Cinema theaters throughout Japan held special screenings of the first television anime starting on August 23.
Source: Sai-Kyo-Oh! Zukan: The Ultimate Battles anime's website, Comic Natalie
