Electrical equipment company Brother Industries has just announced that they will be collaborating with the upcoming TV anime adaptation of Kotoba Inoya’s fashion-themed series Smile Down the Runway (Runway de Waratte). The collaboration entails the presence of Brother Industries machines in the entire series, which will be used by the fashion designer characters. A key visual was released for the collaboration, which you can check out below.

Brother Industries has also launched a collaboration website with the series and have posted this message as well: “Brother supports people who craft things by hand. We feel the same way as the characters of Smile Down the Runway, who strive to be models and designers, as well as its depictions of the appeal of hand-making clothes. Thus we’re collaborating with the anime! We hope that you’ll feel the fun and appeal of handcrafting through the anime and the products.”

In addition, the anime series’ official Twitter account also posted videos of Yumiri Hanamori, the voice actress for lead character Chiyuki Fujito, using Brothers equipment in crafting items. You can check out the videos here and here.

The male protagonist Ikuto Tsumura will be voiced by Natsuki Hanae, who also voiced Yuna D. Kaito from Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc as well as Taichi Yagami from Digimon Adventure tri, among others.

The series will be directed by Nobuyoshi Nagayama (Happy Sugar Life, My Girlfriend is a Shobitch), with Touko Machida (Lucky Star) in charge of series composition and Misaki Kaneko (chief animation director for Fruits Basket) in charge of character design. Studio Ezo’la (Happy Sugar Life) will be animating the series.

Smile Down the Runway was released in May 2017 and has been serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine ever since. So far, 12 tankobon volumes have been released for the manga. The manga is also being released digitally by Kodansha Comics in North America.

Kodansha describes the manga’s story as such:

“Chiyuki Fujito has a dream: to become a Paris Collection model. The problem is, she’s too short to be a model, and everyone around her tells her so! But no matter what they say, she won’t give up. Her classmate, a poor student named Ikuto Tsumura, also has a dream: to become a fashion designer. One day Chiyuki tells him that it’s “”probably impossible”” for him, causing him to consider giving it up … ?! This is the story of two individuals wholeheartedly chasing after their dreams in spite of all the negativity that comes after them!”

The anime is set for a January 10, 2020 release.

Source: Anime News Network