Mahjong Soul Pon☆ Anime Posts Web-Only Special Episode

Mahjong Soul Pon☆ (Jong-Tama Pong☆), the "comical" television anime shorts adaptation of Cat Food Studio and Yostar's free-to-play mahjong game Mahjong Soul (Jong-Tama or Jan-Tama/majsoul), posted a web-only special episode on YouTube on Tuesday. The video features virtual YouTubers Ito Life and Tsukasa Tenkai, as well as professional mahjong player Takaharu Ooi.

The anime stars: (left to right in top row then bottom, character name romanizations not confirmed)

• Yūki Ono as Wanjirō
• Maaya Uchida as Ichi-hime
• Mariya Ise as as Kaguya-hime
• Shinnosuke Tachibana as Hideki Akitomo
• Ami Koshimizu as Yui Yagi
• Hiroki Yasumoto as Osamu Saitō

The anime will premiere on April 1. Crunchyroll will stream the anime as it airs in Japan.

Kenshirō Morii (Anime-Gataris, BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! Pico, Grand Blues!) is directing the anime at Scooter Films, and Alke is credited with animation cooperation. Morii is also overseeing and writing the series scripts. Motoki Nakanishi is the assistant director. Sōshi Kinutani is adapting the character designs for animation, Noriko Tsutsui is the art director, Takatoshi Hamano is the sound director, and Shintarō Mori is composing the music.

The Chinese game company Cat Food Studio developed the online mahjong game and launched it in China in 2018. Yostar debuted it in Japan as a web browser game in April 2019. The game is also now available as an app on iOS and Android devices. The game is free-to-play, but players can update their avatar characters and accessories with random microtransactions.

Sources: Mahjong Soul Pon☆ anime's YouTube channel, Comic Natalie, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web