The official website for Toei Animation's Digimon Adventure tri. anime film project announced on Thursday that Hiroaki Hirata and Chiaki Matsuzawa are joining the cast. Hirata will narrate the films. He previously served as the narrator for Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, and he has also played the roles of Leomon and Yamato's father, among other roles in the franchise.

Matsuzawa, a real-life news announcer and well-known Digimon fan, will play an announcer (pictured at right) who reports on Digimon-related news. Matsuzawa previously played announcers in UN-GO and Concrete Revolutio.

The cast for the human characters in Digimon Adventure tri. is completely different from the original series, and includes:



Natsuki Hanae as Taichi Yagami Suzuko Mimori as Sora Takenouchi

Yoshimasa Hosoya as Yamato Ishida

Mutsumi Tamura as Kōshirō Izumi

Hitomi Yoshida as Mimi Tachikawa

Junya Ikeda as Jō Kido

Junya Enoki as Takeru Takaishi

MAO as Hikari Yagami

Daisuke Namikawa as Daigo Nishijima, a part-time teacher who serves as a substitute homeroom teacher







Yuko Kaida as Maki Himekawa, a mysterious woman who appears before the DigiDestined

The original cast for the Digimon partners are returning for the new anime. Atsuya Uki (Cencoroll, Tsuritama) is providing the character designs, Yuuko Kakihara (Heaven's Lost Property) is acting as series script supervisor, and Keitaro Motonaga (Rayearth) is directing.

The staff will host a premiere advance screening of the first film Digimon Adventure tri. Saikai on October 23, followed by a Niconico Live special streaming on October 25.

The first film in the six-part project will start a limited three-week engagement in 10 theaters in Japan on November 21. The Blu-ray Disc for the first part will initially go on sale at the theaters on November 21, and iTunes will also sell the first part on the same day. The retail Blu-ray and DVD releases will follow on December 18.

AiM (Ai Maeda) is returning for the first part's ending theme "I wish." Kouji Wada returns to perform the original opening theme song "Butter-Fly," while Ayumi Miyazaki also returns to perform the insert song "Brave Heart." All three songs are new recordings of songs from the original Digimon Adventure series, and the CDs for all three will go on sale on November 25.

Source: MoCa News

Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, DLH112