Ultraman Season 2 Reveals New Trailer, Final Premiere Date

Ultraman Season 2 will premiere on April 14.

The premiere date was finally revealed by production company Tsuburaya via the official Ultraman website. A new trailer from the show also revealed, which shows off more of the new Ultramen that will be joining the series in its second season, and sets up the "Disappearance Incident" that will form the basis for the new season's story arc. The trailer also teases an appearance from the original Ultraman, complete with the original 1960s tokusatsu suit design. The website also reveals that Season 2 will be six episodes long.

The official website also reveals that veteran voice actor Maaya Sakamoto, who is also known for starring in anime such as The Vision of Escaflowne, Ouran High School Host Club and the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, will join the show as Izumi, the girlfriend of Kotaro Higashi, a.k.a. Ultraman Taro. Sakamoto joins a cast that also includes Metal Gear Solid and Saint Seiya's Hideyuki Tanaka and Eden of the East's Ryohei Kimura. Free! Iwatobi Swim Club's Tatsuhisa Suzuki was previously slated to be part of Season 2's cast as well, but the actor exited the show's production, as well as several other anime series such as Tokyo Revengers and The Misfit of Demon King Academy, following a public infidelity scandal. Suzuki will be replaced by Tomoaki Maeno, who previously starred in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and World Trigger.

The series is based on a manga written by Eiichi Shimizu and drawn by Tomohiro Shimoguchi, which began publication in 2011 and is still on-going. The series tells the story of Shinjiro Hayata, the son of original Ultraman protagonist Shin Hayata, and serves as a direct sequel to the classic 1966 live-action series. The manga is set in a rebooted continuity that builds off of the story of the original show but ignores the events of all of the other subsequent sequels and spin-off series that followed it. The anime adaptation was produced by Ghost in the Shell's Production IG and Sola Digital Arts, a studio specializing in CG animation. The series is helmed by directors Kenji Kamiya and Shinji Aramaki. The two are frequent collaborators who previously worked together on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the new Blade Runner animated series, Black Lotus, which aired on Adult Swim and Crunchyroll this past fall.

The original season of the Ultraman anime is currently available to stream on Netflix. The original manga is available in English from publisher VIZ Media.

Source: Ultraman Official Website, Twitter