Typically, sports anime tend to focus on either an all-boys team or an all-girls team, with either overcoming the odds in their chosen sport. Other times, you’ll have more casual, slice-of-life style series with a sports flair that, again, typically only focus on girls goofing around in their sports club. You don’t often get to see a mix of guys and girls competing together in serious, hot-blooded sports anime action, which is what makes the upcoming second season of the anime adaptation of Major 2nd so exciting.
The official Twitter account for the Major 2nd anime dropped a wealth of new info for the series recently. First off, they revealed a gorgeous new visual poster for the upcoming season, depicting fiery protagonist Shigeno Daigo alongside the highschool guys and girls he’ll be teaming up with during the upcoming season. Crunchyroll streamed the first season of Major 2nd, which premiered on April 7th of 2018, worldwide alongside its regular Japanese television broadcasts. The anime streaming company described the first season as follows:
Shigeno Daigo is an elementary school student whose father, Goro, is a professional baseball player. Inspired by his father, who was once a Major League player, Daigo started playing baseball with the Mifune Dolphins, a youth league team. He was unable to live up to the expectations of being the son of a professional, however, and quit baseball after less than a year. Then, in the spring of his sixth-grade year, Daigo’s school welcomes a transfer student who’s just returned from America. The transfer student is Sato Hikaru, and it turns out his father is Sato Toshiya, a former Major League player and Goro’s close friend. The fate of these two young men begins to move forward!
Fans of the series can look forward to the new season premiering on Thursday, April 4th, when it will have a debut broadcast on NHK Educational in Japan. An overseas localization has yet to be confirmed, but considering Crunchyroll obtained the streaming rights for the first season, it’s likely that they’ll be streaming the sequel season as well.
When the new episodes of Major 2nd premiere, they’ll be featuring some new vocal talent. Daiki Yamashita joins the cast as the cocky talent Akira Nishina. Eagle-eared anime fans might recognize him as Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia, Sakamichi Onoda from Yowamushi Pedal, or even as Takuma Seto in another baseball-focused sports anime, Ace of Diamond. The returning voice cast of Major 2nd consists of:
- Kana Hanazawa as Mutsuko Sakura
- Kōtarō Nishiyama as Hikaru Satō
- Natsumi Fujiwara as Daigo Shigeno
- Junko Noda as Momoko Shigeno
- Masakazu Morita as Toshiya Satō
- Natsumi Takamori as Izumi Shigeno
- Norihisa Mori as Tashiro
- Shintarou Oohata as Andy Suzuki
- Showtaro Morikubo as Goro Shigeno
- Shunsuke Sakuya as Hideki Shigeno
- Taichi Ichikawa as Hayato Urabe
- Takeshi Kusao as Fujii
- Yuko Sasamoto as Kaoru Shigeno
Much of the staff from the first season of Major 2nd is also set to return for the production of the sequel at OLM. Ayumu Watanabe returns as director, having also previously worked on Space Brothers, After the Rain, and the Doraemon films. Michihiro Tsuchiya returns to oversee script composition for the series, with previous credits on Kami-sama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and the anime adaptation of the original Major manga. He’ll be joined by scriptwriters Kenichi Yamashita and Kenji Konuta, alongside newcomer Akiko Inoue. Miki Matsumoto, the artist responsible for the designs of television anime Angels of Death, is the new character designer for the series, replacing the character designer from the first season Kenichi Ohnuki. Kotaro Nakagawa will be returning as the music composer for the show, while Toshiki Kameyama will be in charge of sound direction.
Major 2nd is based on a long-running sports manga by author Takuya Mitsuda, who launched the series in Weekly Shonen Sunday back in March 2015. At the time, it was the first new chapter in a manga series to be published in the magazine in five years. Shogakukan went on to produce full volume releases of the series, with the 17th volume having been shipped last October. While the manga started back in 2015, it went on a lengthy five-month hiatus which it returned from back in April of 2018.
The series is called Major 2nd for a reason, though. It also serves as a follow-up to the sports manga Major, which Mitsuda also serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1994 all the way until 2010. Shogakukan was the book volume publisher for this series, producing a massive 78-volume run for the lengthy sports manga. In this series, the protagonist is Goro Honda, the legendary professional baseball player who ends up being the father of our protagonist in Major 2nd. When Goro Honda’s father, also a professional baseball player, dies in an accident in the original Major manga, it gives him the motivation to try and carry on the legacy of his father and become a professional baseball player himself.
Major went on to get an anime adaptation back in 2004 that ended up spawning numerous seasons, with the sixth season running in 2010. The manga also ended up inspiring an animated film in 2008 titled Major: Yūjō no Winning Shot.
