Satoshi Mikami, Kōhei Amasaki star in "buddy series" premiering this year, Masakazu Katsura returns to design characters

Sunrise opened a website on Friday to announce that the previously announced new anime project in the Tiger & Bunny franchise is titled Double Decker! Doug & Kirill . The anime will premiere this year.

The official website also revealed that this "buddy series" anime is "one part" of the new Tiger & Bunny anime series project. The series will follow a two-man detective team: one who is a veteran and one who is a rookie.

The anime will star Satoshi Mikami ( Durarara!!×2's Sloan, Record of Grancrest War's Aubest Meletes) as Doug Billingam (pictured left above), and Kōhei Amasaki (Mob Psycho 100's Takeshi Hoshino, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans' Takaki Uno) as Kirill Vlueberry (pictured right). (Note: the spelling of the last names of both characters isn't yet confirmed.)

Joji Furuta (Utano☆Princesama Legend Star, The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of The Commandments director, episode director and storyboarder on original Tiger & Bunny series) is directing the series at Sunrise. Ryo Ando (Interviews with Monster Girls) is in charge of series production, and Tomohiro Suzuki (Tiger & Bunny, One-Punch Man, ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept.) is returning to oversee the series scripts. Manga creator Masakazu Katsura (Zetman) is returning to design the main characters, and Norihiro Itagaki is returning from the Tiger & Bunny The Movie -The Rising- and Tiger & Bunny the Movie: The Beginning films to handle the animation character design. Yuki Hayashi (My Hero Academia, Haikyu!!, Death Parade) is composing the music.

Keiichi Satō, the director of the original Tiger & Bunny television anime, confirmed in January that he is not involved in the project. Yoshitomo Yonetani, director of the Tiger & Bunny anime films, also confirmed in January that he is not involved.

Bandai Namco's booth at the AnimeJapan event on March 24-25 will reveal a promotional video for the series.

The original television anime series centers around heroes for hire — super powered beings known as NEXT who wear sponsor logos while fighting crime on live television. The 2011 anime series spawned two anime movies: Tiger & Bunny the Movie: The Beginning in 2012 and Tiger & Bunny The Movie -The Rising- in 2014. Viz Media released the television series, the films, and the tie-in manga in North America.

Update: While a previous version of this article stated that the anime is a "spinoff" of Tiger & Bunny, the announcement of the anime did not specifically state that the anime is a spinoff, nor did it state if it takes place in the same universe. The announcement uses the phrase "original anime series," and so we have removed mention of it being a spinoff series.

Source: Dengeki Online