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Cocoon Wartime Anime Reveals Main Cast, More Staff, Late-March Debut

NHK announced on Friday that the television anime of Machiko Kyō's Cocoon manga will debut on BS-NHK in late March, before airing on NHK General in August. NHK also revealed the anime's main cast and additional staff, as well as several screenshots.

The anime will star Hikari Mitsushima as Mayu, and Marika Itō as San.

Toko Ina (animation director for Tatami Time Machine Blues) is directing the anime, and kensuke ushio (A Silent Voice, Chainsaw Man, DAN DA DAN) is composing the music.

Hitomi Tateno, a veteran Studio Ghibli animator, is the animation producer, with the studio Sasayuri producing the anime.

The manga is set in a tropical southern island, and centers on San and her best friend Mayu, who go to the island's top all-girls school. War soon comes to their country, and the students of the school soon become embroiled in the war effort, and soon enough, the rear-line care of the wounded. One by one, San and Mayu lose their friends in the ever-worsening war.

Kyō released the manga in 2010, 65 years after the end of World War II. The anime's 2025 release comes 80 years after the end of World War II.

Kyō published the Mitsuami no Kami-sama manga in Shueisha's now-defunct Jump X (Jump Kai) magazine in 2013, and Shueisha published the manga's first and only compiled book volume in the same year. The manga won an award in the 18th Annual Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize in March 2014. The manga inspired Production I.G's Pigtails 28-minute short anime film. The short made its international debut in April 2016 at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, where it won the Platinum Remi Award in the Classic Cel Animation Category. Pigtails has won multiple awards, including the Diamond Award in the Animated Film category at the 2016 California Film Awards.

Sources: NHK, NHK Anime's X/Twitter account, Comic Natalie