The long wait is finally almost over as the brand new iteration of the Battle Athletes franchise, Battle Athletes Daiundoukai ReSTART!, will premiere in April 2021 and we have tons of new information about it to share with everyone!
First announced in the distant past known as June 2020, we now have our very first promotional video, a brand new key visual, plus just for giggles we also have our first cast and crew announcements! Let’s start things off with a 100-second promotional video that first hit the internet on Tuesday, December 15th.
In the promotional video, we learned some names that are going to be attached to this series, including Sumire Morohoshi as the main character Kanata Akehoshi, Yui Ishikawa as Eva Garen Stein, and Miyu Tomita as Shelley Wong. The animation will be produced by Studio Seven with Tadayoshi Sasaki serving as director.
First appearing as a video game in Japan towards the end of 1996, the game first received a four-volume manga adaptation written by Yuki Nakano from March 1997 to November 1998, before also receiving two anime adaptations a few months later. The first to be released was a six-episode OVA series simply titled Battle Athletes, which was released from May 1997 to June 1998. What makes this franchise extra interesting is the fact that, while the OVA series was being released, a brand new television adaptation which completely revamped the story was broadcast starting in October 1997. Both the OVA and television series was released in North America by Geneon, starting in 1998.
I’ve said this before, but I absolutely loved both the Battle Athletes OVA and the Battle Athletes Victory television series and consider the DVDs to be prized among my home video library. I was pretty pumped up about this series when it was first announced, but now that I’ve seen that excellent promotional video, I’m even more jazzed to watch this when it premieres in April!
Source: Crunchyroll News
