Blue Orchestra TV Anime Reveals 6 More Cast Members

NHK revealed six cast members for the television anime of Makoto Akui's Ao no Orchestra (The Blue Orchestra) manga on Thursday.

©阿久井真／小学館／ＮＨＫ・ＮＥＰ・日本アニメーション

The newly announced cast includes (pictured above from left to right, starting with top row):

• Konomi Kohara as Mari Tateishi
• Kaori Maeda as Chika Yonezawa
• Jun Fukushima as Osamu Shibata
• Chiwa Saito as Hajime Aono's mother
• Hayato Kaneko as Takeda-sensei
• Daisuke Ono as Hiroaki Ayukawa

©阿久井真／小学館／ＮＨＫ・ＮＥＰ・日本アニメーション

The anime stars: (musical performers in parentheses)

• Shōya Chiba (Ryōta Higashi) as Hajime Aono
• Ai Kakuma (Yurie Yamada) as Ritsuko Akine
• Shimba Tsuchiya (Takuto Owari) as Nao Saeki
• Minako Satō (Kyoko Ogawa) as Haru Kozakura
• Makoto Furukawa (Haruma Satō) as Ichirō Yamada
• Lynn (Karen Kido) as Shizuka Tachibana
• Shintarō Asanuma (Tomotaka Seki) as Yō Hatori
• Junya Enoki (María Dueñas) as Sō Harada
• Ryotaro Okiayu (Hilary Hahn) as Ryūjin Aono

The anime will premiere on NHK Educational on April 9 at 5:00 p.m. JST.

Jun Sakata (To Your Eternity) is the anime's production supervisor and chief producer. Seiji Kishi (Assassination Classroom, Persona 4 The Animation, Classroom of the Elite) is directing the anime at Nippon Animation. Yuuko Kakihara (Chihayafuru, Digimon Adventure tri., Persona 4 The Animation, 2022 Urusei Yatsura) is both writing and overseeing the series scripts, and Kazuaki Morita (Assassination Classroom, Classroom of the Elite, Persona 4 The Animation) is designing the characters.

Indonesian publisher Elex Media has released the manga, and it describes the story:

In the fall of his third and final year of middle school, Hajime Aono, a violin prodigy, stopped playing violin for his own personal reasons. But it was also that year when he got to know a girl who told him about a high school with a prestigious school orchestra. Suddenly, the gears in the clock of Aono's life began to turn again. This is the story of a youth drama that brings forth the harmony between music and the heart!

Akui launched the ongoing manga in Shogakukan's Manga ONE app in 2017. The manga won the Best Shōnen Manga award at the 68th Shogakukan Manga Awards in January.

Sources: NHK, Comic Natalie