P.A. Works, the studio behind critically acclaimed anime such as The Aquatope of White Sand, will adapt the Ya Boy Kongming! manga as its next anime series.
The new series was announced with a trailer posted to YouTube by distributor Avex Pictures. The show is based on the manga of the same name, which was created by writer Yuto Yotsuba and artist Ryo Ogawa. The Three Kingdoms-inspired comedy was first published in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine in 2019, and will soon release its seventh compiled volume in Japan. The manga is also available in English from Kodansha USA. The new anime adaptation is scheduled to begin airing sometime in April 2022.
Ya Boy Kongming! tells the story of the Zhuge Kongming, also known as Zhuge Liang, a famous politician and tactician during China's historical Three Kingdoms period. After spending his life fighting wars, Kongming wishes on his deathbed to be reborn into a peaceful world. Instead of dying, however, the legendary strategist wakes up 1800 years later in modern day Tokyo, where he befriends the young musician Eiko Tsukumi and decides to use the skills he learned on the battlefields of ancient China to help her achieve her dreams of becoming a star.
The new anime will be directed by Osamu Honma, who directed episodes of The Aquatope of White Sand. The series will be written by Yoko Yonaiyama, who previously wrote the scripts for the popular horse girl anime, Uma Musume. Shirobako's Kanami Sekiguchi will handle the show's character designs, while Genki Hikota, who is best known for writing the theme song to Yuri!!! on Ice, will compose the music.
P.A. Works was established in 2000. While most anime studios work primarily on manga adaptations, P.A. Works is best known for their completely original series, such as the before mentioned slice-of-life drama Aquatope of White Sand and the steampunk action series Appare-Ranman!. The studio is best known for Shirobako, a very meta anime series about five women who work in various positions within the anime industry. Shirobako originally premiered in 2014 and continues to be popular to this day: the latest entry in the series, Shirobako Movie, was released in Japan in 2020 and was recently released in English on DVD and Blu-ray earlier this fall. True to the series' meta nature, the movie sees the cast moving on from creating TV anime and starting work on their first theatrical animated feature.
The Aquatope of White Sand is still airing in Japan, with Crunchyroll providing an online simulcast of the series for international audiences. The series is scheduled to air its final episode in December.
Source: YouTube
