Sony Music announced on Thursday that SPYAIR will perform the opening theme song “Awake” for the first cours (quarter of a year) of the television anime of Brocco Lee‘s manga adaptation of Nekoko‘s The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System (Tsuihō Sareta Tensei Jū Kishi wa Game Chishiki de Musō Suru) light novel series.

The anime will air for two consecutive cours on TBS and MBS‘s Super Animeism TURBO programming block at 12:26 a.m. JST (effectively, July 3).

The anime stars:

Shingo Suzuki is the general director, and Katsumasa Yokomine (The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today, Momentary Lily) is directing the anime at GoHands. Takayuki Uchida (The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today, W’z) is designing the characters, and also serving as one of the chief animation directors along with Keiji Tani (Momentary Lily) and Makoto Furuta (Momentary Lily). Tetsuichi Yamagishi (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie key animation) is the chief director, Hiroshi Ōkubo (K, The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses) is the main animator, Glovision is in charge of sound production, Enji Nakajima and Tetsuya Gunji are the sound directors, and Ludvig Forssell (BELLE film) is composing the music.

Kodansha is releasing the manga in English through its K MANGA service, and it describes the story:

“You good-for-nothing bastard. You are the son of a Sword Saint, yet you dare pull such a defective Class!?”

During the Divine Blessing Ceremony of the 15-year-old Elma who came from a lineage of Sword Saints, he had manifested a commonly deemed defective class known as the Heavy Knight. He had been deprived of his position as the next head of the Edvan Household and was then exiled. The Heavy Knight class had an unbalanced status and useless skills, to top it off, it was even said to be a class cowardly and indolent people have.

But, Elma knew better—that this world was the world of the game he had used to play before—and that the Heavy Knight class was the strongest class to exist. Elma made full use of the knowledge he had in his previous life and began his efficient walkthrough of the world he was reincarnated into.

Nekoko began serializing the story on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō (Let’s Become Novelists) website in April 2021. Kodansha published the first print volume with illustrations by Jaian in June 2022, and the fourth volume shipped on December 26. Brocco Lee launched the manga adaptation in Kodansha‘s Yanmaga website in February 2022. The manga moved from Kodansha‘s Yanmaga website to Kodansha‘s Young Magazine in September 2024. The manga’s 17th volume shipped on April 6.

Seven Seas Entertainment also publishes Nekoko‘s Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling and Disciple of the Lich light novel series in English, and also publishes RIO‘s manga adaptation of the Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling novels.

Source: Press release

Actor Hideaki Itō narrates short that spans 48 years

The Star Wars franchise released a new animated “Okaeri, Star Wars” (Welcome Back, Star Wars) short on Friday, one week before the saga returns to theaters with The Mandalorian and Grogu film. Japanese actor Hideaki Itō (live-action Umizaru, Sukiyaki Western Django, Terraformars) narrates this story of passing Star Wars from parent to child.

The short opens with a boy catching the first Star Wars film at the Nichigeki — the real-life Tokyo theater (as seen and destroyed in several Godzilla films) that gave Star Wars its splashy Japanese premiere in 1978. The boy then starts collecting the theatrical pamphlets, Kenner action figures, and even bottle caps before watching Return of the Jedi on his first date in 1983. He takes his son to see his first film, The Phanom Menace, in 1999, and his son becomes a huge fan with The Force Awakens in 2015. In 2026, three generations of fans watch Star Wars‘ return to theaters.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is set to open in Japan and the United States on May 22. It is the first Star Wars film to open in theaters since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. Jon Favreau directs this film starring Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin/The Mandalorian, Jeremy Allen White as Rotta the Hutt, and Sigourney Weaver as Ward.

Source: Star Wars‘s YouTube channel