The spring 2018 series Piano no Mori is getting ready for its second season to hit in January and NHK has now set their plans for it. The show is now scheduled for a January 27th, 2019 debut on the network but it comes with a change. Gaku Nakatani directed the first season but not Hiroyuki Yamaga is on board for it. Everything else looks to be the same from the first season.
The first season saw Gaku Nakatani is directing it based on the series composition by Aki Itami and Mika Abe. Sumie Kinoshita is serving as the chief animation director and character designer while Fukushima Gainax (now studio Gaina) is on board as the production studio.
The Japanese cast includes Soma Saito as Kai Ichinose, Junichi Suwabe as Sousuke Ajino, Natsuki Hanae as Shuuhei Amamiya, Ryoko Shiraishi as Kai Ichinose (Elementary), You Taichi as Shuuhei Amamiya (Elementary), Yūichi Nakamura as Pang Wei, Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Kōsei Hirata, Maaya Sakamoto as Reiko Ichinose, KENN as Lech Szymanowski, Aoi Yūki as Takako Maruyama, Mariya Ise as Sophie Ormesson, Katsuyuki Konishi as Karol Adamski, Koji Yusa as Takeshi Saga, Hiroshi Yanaka as Kōtarō Shiba, Marie Miyake as Namie Amamiya, Ryou Hirohashi as Arisa, Motoko Kumai as Daigaku Kanehira, Hideyuki Tanaka as Yōichirō Amamiya, and Bin Shimada as Jean-Jacques Theroux.
The feature film from Madhouse was released in the summer of 2007 and was directed by Masayuki Kojima with character designs by Shigeru Fujita. The property is based on the original concept from Makoto Isshiki that ran from 1998 through 2015 with a break in between and has twenty-six compiled volumes.
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Plot concept: Amamiya Shuuhei moves from Tokyo to the countryside due to his grandmother’s bad health. His father is a famous pianist and Shuuhei has taken strict piano lessons since he was very young, aspiring to follow in his footsteps. In school, he is teased by his classmates and is dared to play the piano in the forest. This piano is said to be cursed: if you play it, no sound will come. After school, Ichinose Kai, a boy in the same class, takes Shuuhei to the forest. When Shuuhei tries to play he fails, but Kai plays a wonderful song.
