The official website for the television anime of Atsuko Asano's Battery baseball novels revealed new cast members, a new visual, and the show's July 14 premiere on Thursday. The site also confirmed that Amazon Prime Video will stream the anime exclusively in Japan and other countries, as part of Amazon's deal with Fuji TV.

The first episode will steam on Amazon Prime Video in Japan on July 13, before it premieres on Fuji TV. However, subsequent episodes will stream at 27:00 (effectively 3:00 a.m. the next day), after Fuji TV's regular airing time of 24:55 (12:55 a.m.).

The additional cast includes:



Ayumu Murase as Keita Higashidani

Ayumu Murase as Keita Higashidani

Kaito Ishikawa as Fumito Sawaguchi



Previously announced cast members include:



Kouki Uchiyama (Nisekoi's Raku Ichijō) as Takumi Harada, a pitcher and the story's protagonist

Kouki Uchiyama (Nisekoi's Raku Ichijō) as Takumi Harada, a pitcher and the story's protagonist

Tasuku Hatanaka (Ushio & Tora's Ushio) as Gō Nagakura, a catcher and the story's other protagonist



From left to right:

Yūi Fujimaki as Seiha Harada, Takumi's younger brother

Yuuki Ono as Shūgo Kadowaki, a serious-minded cleanup hitter on the champion middle school team

Ryohei Kimura as Shunji Mizugaki, a shortstop on the champion middle school team

Yuichiro Umehara as Kazuki Kaionji, captain, cleanup hitter, and shortstop for the Shinden Higashi Middle School baseball club

Fuji TV previously streamed the anime's second promotional video last month.

Tomomi Mochizuki (House of Five Leaves, Pupa) is both directing and scripting the upcoming anime adaptation at Zero-G (Hyper Speed GranDoll, Shadow Skill, MD Geist II - Death Force). Takako Shimura (Wandering Son, Sweet Blue Flowers original creator) is in charge of the original character designs, Hideoki Kusama (Sket Dance, Mononoke animation director) is adapting those designs for animation and is also serving as chief animation director, and Akira Senju (Valvrave the Liberator, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) is composing the music.

Asano's novels revolve around Takumi Harada, a young man who moves to a mountain town in Okayama prefecture during the spring break before he enters middle school due to his father's job transfer. Takumi is a pitcher, and after he moves he loses faith in his own talent, when suddenly his classmate Gō Nagakura appears in front of him. Gō has a strong desire to form a "battery" (a combination of a pitcher and catcher) with Takumi.

Kyouiku Gageki originally released the novel series in hardback between 1996 and 2005, and Kadokawa re-released the series in paperback in 2003-2007. A live-action film adaptation opened in Japan in 2007, and a live-action television series aired in 2008. Asano's No. 6 novels also inspired a manga and a television anime adaptation.

Shimura will begin a new manga adaptation Kadokawa's Monthly Comic Beam on June 11. The novels already received an eight-volume manga adaptation by Chikage Yuniwa between 2005-2010. The manga then went on hiatus, but Yuniwa resumed the manga in Kadokawa's Asuka magazine in the August issue last year.

Shimura is best known for her Wandering Son and Aoi Hana manga, both of which have inspired television anime series adaptations in 2011 and 2009 respectively. She also drew the original character designs for the Aldnoah.Zero anime. Shimura launched a new manga series in Libre Publishing's Be x Boy magazine on May 6. Fantagraphics is releasing volumes of her Wandering Son manga in North America.

Source: MoCa News