The official website for the television anime of Makoto Isshiki's Piano no Mori (The Piano Forest) manga announced on Friday Netflix is exclusively streaming the anime. Netflix will debut new episodes inside Japan immediately after they air on NHK. Netflix plans to release all the episodes at once in more than 190 countries outside of Japan "around this fall." Netflix is streaming the first episode in Japan now with the title Forest of Piano .

The anime premiered on NHK on April 8 at 12:10 a.m. (effectively April 9 morning). NHK is listing the series with 12 episodes.

The anime stars:

Sōma Saitō as Kai Ichinose

Ryoko Shiraishi as Kai Ichinose (child)

Natsuki Hanae as Shūhei Amamiya

Yō Taichi as Shūhei Amaiya (child)

Junichi Suwabe as Sōsuke Ajino

Yūichi Nakamura as Pang Wei

Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Kōsei Hirata

Maaya Sakamoto as Reiko Ichinose

KENN as Lech Szymanowski

Aoi Yūki as Takako Maruyama

Mariya Ise as Sophie Ormesson

Katsuyuki Konishi as Karol Adamski

Koji Yusa as Takeshi Saga

Hiroshi Yanaka as Kōtarō Shiba

Marie Miyake as Namie Amamiya

Ryou Hirohashi as Arisa

Motoko Kumai as Daigaku Kanehira

Hideyuki Tanaka as Yōichirō Amamiya

Bin Shimada as Jean-Jacques Theroux

The manga follows two boys from different walks of life. Kai was born the son of a prostitute and learned to play an abandoned piano in the forest by his home. Shūhei is child of two prestigious pianists. The two boys end up meeting through their one common thread: music.

Gaku Nakatani ( Madagascar 3 CG supervisor) is directing the anime at Fukushima Gainax. Aki Itami ( Flowers of Evil , Mushishi , Rainbow Days ) and Mika Abe ( Danchi Tomoo ) are in charge of series composition. Sumie Kinoshita ( Girlish Number , A Sister's All You Need ) is designing the characters, and is also credited as chief animation director.

Aoi Yūki ( Saga of Tanya the Evil , Hakumei and Mikochi ) is performing the ending theme song "Kaeru Basho ga Aru to Iu Koto" (To Have a Place to Come Home to).

The pianists, and the characters they will perform pieces for, include Kyohei Sorita (Sōsuke Ajino), Takagi Ryoma (Shūhei Amamiya), Niu Niu (Wei Pang), Szymon Nehring (Lech Szymanowski), and Juliette Journaux (Sophie Ormesson). The anime will also feature performances by junior pianists Kotone Uehara, Modan Oyama, Kamuro Sahara, and Ayano Baba to portray the performances of the show's main characters Kai, Shūhei, or Takako in their childhood years. Nippon Columbia hosted an audition for the junior pianists.

Thanks to Craig Henry for the news tip.