Those anticipating the next season of Watanuki-san chi no were greeted with some exciting new announcements via a live stream on Tokino Sora‘s channel earlier this week. Sora, joined by costars and fellow Hololive members Natsuiro Matsuri and Oozora Subaru, joked around, shared memories and gave us a bunch of new info about the upcoming Watanuki-san chi to.

What did we find out?

There were two big announcements this week: first, we have a date and time for when the show will start airing! We’ll be seeing the first episode air Monday, April 6th at 1:30 AM JST, which will also be its regular time slot. The show will also be airing in Osaka on Wednesday nights.

Second, we have new goods coming! Sora and friends showed off a slew of new swag you’ll be able to purchase on the TV Tokyo web store starting the 19th of this month. Pictured below, we’ve got stand figures, can badges and a t-shirt coming!

we’re still trying to figure out if Arisu’s shirt is for an existing band or modeled off of a Gojira album cover

in case you can’t tell, Matsuri’s character sells alcohol

All of this merch is very attractive with cute character concept art – Matsuri was especially proud of showing off her bare legs, saying “I figured I’d show them off and make everyone happy.” Subaru was also pleased with how clever and mature her character design made her appear.

If you noticed the consistent colors used in the backgrounds for each character, that’s intentional! As Sora points out on the stream, these designs were made with the intent of turning them into cyalume and other goods! Viewers were encourage to purchase lots of these as it will create the possibility for more goods and draw more attention to the show.

Set differed from the “Hololive zoo”

But the stream wasn’t just announcements – we also saw some fun chatter between Sora, Matsuri and Subaru. Asked about their experiences on set, Subaru remarked that “once we got started I got excited, and felt like we were doing something really wild,” and Matsuri said she felt happy to do it but felt some pressure too. All clearly had a lot of fun, with Sora remarking about how lively shooting the karaoke bar segments was, to the surprise of the staff. The bar will feature a variety of guests and recurring costars, including Tenjin Kotone and Asano Ruri.

In a particularly amusing segment (Sora herself had trouble talking about this without laughing) Sora the contrast between the main set and the karaoke bar.

Sora: “When the three sisters plus Ikuko (Mononobe Arisu) were together it was surprisingly calm.”

Subaru: “Seriously, it was really calm, totally different from the Hololive zoo.”

Sora: “So when Subaru came onto the set when it was the the three sisters plus Ikuko, she wasn’t used to it, and she said, “Wow, so this is a real set for a TV show.”

Subaru: “How do I put this, it was completely different from the office.”

Joking aside, as mentioned in our previous article on the new season, this isn’t exactly Matsuri and Subaru’s first time acting. Both appeared in the Watanuki-san voice drama and stage show, and shared their thoughts on how that felt during the stream. With regards to the stage show which toured Japan last year, Matsuri said she was happy to do it but also felt pressure with an audience, and that she worked hard on the singing and dancing portion of the program “because we’re idols, of course.” Subaru was also positive, talking about how hard she worked on her dancing. Like Mononobe Arisu, all praised the meals served on-set.

If you’re curious, you can get a better sense of Matsuri and Subaru’s characters (along with the rest of the supporting cast) through the voice drama which is available for purchase on the official Watanuki-san booth page along with after recordings for some of the episodes. According to remarks made during the stream it sounds like they’ll be adapting some (though not all!) of these into the show itself! Though do keep in mind that these, like the show itself, are all in Japanese and unlikely to be getting a translation (official or unofficial) anytime soon.

Stay tuned to this blog as well as the official twitter account for more information!