Ultraman's second season will stream worldwide exclusively on Netflix next April.
As reported by Comics Natalie, the announcement was made by Tsuburaya Productions during a livestream event hosted by the studio. Tsuburaya is the special effects company behind the long-running Ultraman franchise that is also known for producing a number of other tokusatsu (live-action costumed hero series,) including Denkou Chojin Gridman, which was localized for Western audiences as Super Human Samurai Cybersquad in the 1990s. During the livestream, the company confirmed the premiere window for the return of the Ultraman anime, and released a new poster image of the 6 Ultra Brothers, the new team of transforming heroes that will protect the Earth during the show's second season.
The Ultra Brothers were first revealed at Netflix's TUDUM event in September, and made their first animated appearances with a trailer shown during the streaming company's "Anime Day" event in November. In the original live-action Ultraman continuity, the Six Ultra Brothers were a team made up of the first six Ultra beings to come to Earth, which includes the original Ultraman, Zoffy, Ultraseven and Ultraman Taro.
The event also revealed that veteran voice actor Junichi Sawabe, who previously played Viktor in Yuri!! on Ice and Ryomen Sukuna in Jujutsu Kaisen, will be joining the show's cast as the alien being Pedanto. Free! Iwatobi Swim Club's Tatsuhisa Suzuki was previously announced to be the voice of Ultraman Taro, but the voice actor exited the series following a very public cheating scandal this summer. While Suzuki stayed on as Makoto Tachibana in the Free! finale movies, the actor resigned from all other roles and announced an indefinite hiatus from public activities.
The second season will once again be directed by Eden of the East's Kenji Kamiya and Appleseed's Shinji Aramaki, who previously collaborated on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and also recently teamed up to direct Adult Swim and Crunchyroll's latest original series, Blade Runner: Black Lotus. The new season will once again be animated by Production IG and Sola Digital Arts. The anime series is based on a manga by writer Eiichi Shimizu and artist Tomohiro Shimoguchi, which was first published in 2011. The original season of the anime adaptation was developed as a Netflix exclusive and debuted in 2019. The series tells the story of Shinjiro Hayata, the son of Ultraman's Shin Hayata, and serves as a direct sequel to the original 1966 live-action series. Outside of its connections to the first show, the anime is set in its own continuity that ignores the events of all of the original series' subsequent sequels and spin-off series.
Source: Comics Natalie
