Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san to get TV anime

Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san is arguably the number one ecchi manga currently running, making this anime green-lighting one of the biggest of recent years.

Technically this news is only a rumor, though it is being reported by two different Japanese blogs.  The latter of which listed it as a rumor yesterday but today updated the status to “confirmed.” It is believed the initial story is sourced from a magazine, though I’m not sure if it was Shonen Jump or not.  Ihavenoname’s best guess: the news was leaked from next week’s issue of Weekly Shounen Jump.  He thinks that since the announce image (see below) has “87” visible on it, and 87 is the chapter that will publish in the next issue of Weekly Shonen Jump.

 

 

Per the sources above, more details (staff, etc) will be given at the Jump Festa event which will take place from December 15th-17th.  The image below appears to confirm that Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san will have an announcement slotted in for the afternoon of December 16th at this event.

Apparently the production committee for this series has already been made even though the announcement of said committee is over a month away.

That’s all there is to say for now.  We’ll be sure to have a follow up post when more details are given at Jump Festa.

A few thoughts.  The first is that this announcement is completely unsurprising, but still feels like great news given how sparse 2016 and 2017 were for ecchi.

I was actually thinking of doing a post this past week on the top 10 most likely ecchi manga to get future anime adaptations. Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san would have easily ranked number one on that list.  Some people have called this series the next gen To Love-Ru given the art style quality and having the same publisher.  A series like this just looked like a future anime from day one, and now it finally will be.

As far as what to expect, really that depends on production.  But given the popularity and visual quality of the source material, anything less than two or three TV seasons for this series over the next several years would feel like a disappointment.  This series definitely has franchise written all over it.  Similar to To Love-Ru, the quality of the character designs and art essentially carry the entire series, so having a high quality production is very important for this series to reach its anime potential.  Shonen Jump seemed to realize this and sought out quality production for To Love-Ru, and I’m expecting the same here, whether it is with Xebec or another quality company such as Lerche or Asread.  Even if it is with a relatively unheard of company, I would expect it to look great.  A series like this likely wouldn’t lack for financial backing.

Is the manga itself actually good?  I couldn’t really say, I’ve only looked at the raws.  But it does seem kind of dumbed down, with the main purpose of the plot really just being to guide us from one nude service scene to the next.  But really, is the story in ecchi ever really that good?  Only rarely.  What matters are the visuals, and the visuals for this manga are about as good as it gets.

I can only guess on the release date.  Given that the production team has already been formed, and that anime usually take about 6-12 months to produce, a Summer or Fall 2018 release date seems totally possible.

Add this to what appears to be at least a little bit of a bounce back year for ecchi in 2018.  High School DxD season 4 is coming soon, and there’s a good chance we’ll see some hobby Japan projects next year as well, with a new Queen’s Blade anime allegedly in the works, as well as talk about Bikini Warriors getting at least one more OVA.  And then there’s that whole 7 Virtues anime, which probably still has a decent chance of happening given that Hobby Japan isn’t as interested in blu-ray sales as they are in advertising their figurines.

And of course, we’ll have the Shinmai movie too.

In 2017, we basically just had 7 Sins plus a whole lot of minor series that were barely worth mentioning.  2018 probably won’t be on the same level as 2015, but it should prove to be a step back in the right direction.