TC Entertainment is taking us back not quite as far as the subject may seem with the Play Ball anime series. With it a few weeks until the set arrives, we now have a look at the main cover for it and it’s certainly capturing the look of the original manga that it’s based on. The anime itself came out back in 2005 and 2006 with the two-season twenty-six episode run but it’s based on the much older manga, which is part of the anniversary element. The new set is a first time on Blu-ray release that’s scheduled for a July 27th, 2018 debut priced at 20,000 yen. The show is spread across two discs with each season getting its own disc. It doesn’t look like there are any extras included with it.
The series had Satoshi Dezaki as the chief director and Setsuko Shibuichi as the main director. Based on the original work by Akio Chiba, Keizo Shimizu handled the character designs with Ippei Masui as the chief animation director. Magic Bus produced the animation.
The Japanese cast includes Ken’ichirou Maeda as Takao Taniguchi, Chikahiko Minamida as Yamaguchi, Kazuki Taketani as Sasaki, Kouichi Shibasaki as Yokoi, Kouichi Yamada as Matsumoto, Michiru Sato as Igarashi, Ryou Kubota as Tomuro, Shinsuke Fukui as Oota, Takashi Hikida as Yamamoto, Yoshitaka Kuremoto as Nakayama, Yutaka Kouno as Tadokoro, Yuu Asano as Marui, and Yuuki Taniguchi as Muramatsu.
Plot Concept: Takao Taniguchi was the captain & pitcher of his junior high school’s baseball team, but after suffering a fractured finger during a game Takao enters Sumitani High School as a fan and not a player. Even though Takao joins the soccer team and shows potential, he still has a great love for baseball and still umpires games in secret until his coach hears of this and gets angered, forcing Takao to leave the team. At the recommendation of the soccer team captain, Takao joins the Sumitani baseball team… Unfortunately, the team is notorious for losing big games due to their inexperience.
[Source: Play Ball]
