New Urusei Yatsura Anime Casts Shizuka Ishigami as Benten

The official website for the new television anime of Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura manga announced on Thursday that Shizuka Ishigami will play Benten, Lum's childhood biker friend, who is part of the Gods of Luck clan.

Hiroshi Kamiya will voice Ataru Moroboshi (left in the image below), and Sumire Uesaka will voice Lum (right).

The other cast members include:

Maaya Uchida as Shinobu Miyake

Mamoru Miyano as Shūtarō Mendō

Wataru Takagi as Cherry

Miyuki Sawashiro as Sakura

Kana Hanazawa as Ran

Katsuyuki Konishi as Rei

Saori Hayami as Oyuki

The anime's first season will premiere in October and run for a half a year, or two cours (quarters of a year), without breaks. The entire run of the anime will adapt selected stories from the manga and last four cours, or a full year, although not consecutively. The anime will air in the Noitamina programming block on Fuji TV and other channels to mark the 100th anniversary of the manga's publisher Shogakukan.

Takahiro Kamei (episode director on Strike Witches: Road to Berlin, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind) is serving as the series director. Masaru Yokoyama (Horimiya, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans, 2019's Fruits Basket) is composing the music. The other staff members are:

• Sub-Character Design: Kazuhiro Takamura, Mikio
• Mechanic Design: JNTHED, Yoshihiro Sono
• Prop Design: Ryō Hirata
• Art Design: Kaoru Aoki
• Art Director: Masanobu Nomura
• Color Key Artist: Ayaka Nakamura
• CG Director: Kanji Ōshima
• Compositing Director of Photography: Yuuichirou Nagata
• Editing: Kiyoshi Hirose
• Sound Director: Yoshikazu Iwanami

Hideya Takahashi (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Strike Witches: Road to Berlin) and Yasuhiro Kimura (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team) are directing the anime at david production, and Yuuko Kakihara (Cells at Work!, Heaven's Lost Property) is overseeing the series scripts. Naoyuki Asano (Mr. Osomatsu, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!) is designing the characters.

Viz Media began publishing the manga in 2-in-1 omnibus editions in spring 2019 with new translations. Viz describes the series:

Revisit the acclaimed romantic comedy about an unlucky human boy who meets a beautiful space alien princess in this large trim size edition with all-new translations and new cover designs. In the series, Ataru Moroboshi's supernatural encounters with the feminine kind all start when he's chosen to play tag with an alien princess named Lum who invades the earth on her UFO. Ataru has ten days to touch Lum's horns or aliens will take over the earth! As it turns out, the game of tag is only the beginning of Ataru's troubles, as he continues to attract strange encounters with otherworldly beings like beautiful snow spirit Oyuki and the sexy crow goblin Princess Kurama!

The manga series ran in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine from 1978 to 1987. Viz Media previously released part of the series in English under the titles Lum and The Return of Lum in the 1990s.

The manga inspired a television anime series that ran from 1981 to 1986, various anime films, and an original video anime (OVA) series. AnimEigo released most of the previous anime on home video except for the Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer film which Central Park Media released. After these companies' licenses expired, Discotek Media has been reissuing the movies.

Sources: Urusei Yatsura anime's website, Comic Natalie