NHK's official website announced on Monday that Makoto Isshiki's Piano no Mori (The Piano Forest) manga is getting a television anime adaptation that will air on NHK in April 2018. This year's 48th issue of Kodansha's Morning magazine is revealing more details on Thursday, including the show's official website and Twitter account.

The announcement also revealed that the manga has 6 million copies in print.

Nippon Columbia will host an audition for pianists to play for the show's main characters Kai, Shūhei, or Takako in their childhood years.

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.

Isshiki launched the series in 1998 in Kodansha's Young Magazine Uppers until the magazine ceased publication in 2004. The series resumed in 2006 in Morning magazine, and it ended in November 2015. Kodansha published the 26th and final volume of the series in December 2015.

MADHOUSE adapted the manga into an anime film in 2007. The manga won the Japan Media Arts Festival prize in the Manga category in 2008. Isshiki's 1993 manga Hanada Shonen-shi received a television anime adaptation in 2002 and a live-action film adaptation in 2006.

[Via Yaraon!]