The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom has cast Yūsuke Kobayashi as a mysterious boy who turns up with a plan of his own for the seven brothers. The anime's staff announced the role on November 12, and the character first appears in episode 7, which airs on Saturday.
The show gives no name for the character yet, only the description: a boy with an unclear agenda involving all seven knights. Kobayashi's other work includes leads in Re:ZERO, Dr. Stone and Food Wars, so the role lands with a voice actor who has played a lot of characters holding secrets.
Where the series is
The anime premiered on NHK Educational on October 3 and runs Saturdays at 6:25 p.m. JST, with a Friday 7:00 p.m. repeat. Amazon Prime Video streams it worldwide, including an English dub, which is unusual for an NHK E-TV title and puts it in front of an audience that the channel's broadcast reach would otherwise miss.
Eight episodes in is a sensible point to add a new character. The premise of the show is a rotation: seven brothers, seven kingdoms, seven courtships. A boy who has business with all of them is the kind of arrival that can tie the separate threads together, or at least give the audience a reason to keep the map straight.
The cast so far
- Kengo Takanashi as Nemukunai, the one who cannot sleep
- Makoto Tanikawa as Hakuai, brotherly love
- Haruki Ishiya as Atsugariya, always too hot
- Satoshi Inomata as Samugariya, always too cold
- Kiyoto Mizuno as Kemono Tsukai, the beast tamer
- Taishi Murata as Tsurugi Jiman, proud of his sword
- Reiji Kawashima as Harapeko, always hungry
- Akeno Watanabe as Baribara
- Show Hayami as the narrator
The names are not subtle. Nao Iwamoto's manga gives each brother a trait in place of a personality and then lets the story complicate it, which is roughly how fairy-tale ensembles have worked for a very long time.
The people making it
Kiyoko Sayama directs at J.C. Staff. Her credits include Skip Beat!, Vampire Knight and seasons two and three of To Your Eternity, a mix that suggests she has handled both comedy timing and stories that turn serious without warning.
Shinzō Fujita writes and oversees series scripts. He worked on all three seasons of To Your Eternity and on The World Is Still Beautiful, so he and Sayama have history on the same kind of material. Yuriko Maeda designed the characters, with credits as chief animation director on Requiem of the Rose King and One-Punch Man's second TV season. Yoshiaki Fujisawa composes, with Apocalypse Hotel, Land of the Lustrous and Love Live! School Idol Project on his list. Jin Aketagawa is sound director, with Dr. Stone and Fire Force behind him.
The manga
Iwamoto launched the manga in Shogakukan's Flowers magazine in 2016. The eleventh volume shipped on June 10. It topped the list of manga for female readers in the 2018 edition of Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook, which is the kind of recognition that tends to precede an anime offer rather than follow it.
Viz Media licensed the manga on October 1 and put the first two chapters up digitally the same day. That timing lines up with the anime's broadcast, and it gives English readers a way in without waiting for a print run.
Why the casting news matters more than it looks
Shows built around an ensemble of seven have a structural problem: nobody is the protagonist, so the plot needs an outsider to give it shape. Adding that character at episode 7 rather than episode 1 is a deliberate choice, and it suggests the first cour spent its time on the brothers before introducing anyone who could pull focus.
Kobayashi is a big enough name that the role is unlikely to be a one-episode appearance, which raises the question of how much of the manga's later material the adaptation is planning to reach. The anime has not announced an episode count or a second cour.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the anime's official X account and Comic Natalie.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the anime's official X account and Comic Natalie
Featured image: Episode 7 character visual for The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom, via Anime News Network.
