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Ushio & Tora TV Anime's July 3 Premiere, Opening Theme Song Announced

This year's 26th issue of Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine will announce on Wednesday that the television anime adaptation of Kazuhiro Fujita's supernatural battle manga Ushio & Tora (Ushio to Tora) will premiere on July 3 at 10:30 p.m. on the Tokyo MX channel.

The announcement also notes that the rock band Kinniku Shōjo Tai will perform the anime's opening theme song "Mazeru na Kiken." Tokuma Japan Communications will release the song's single CD on August 5, which will come with a special illustration drawn by Fujita.
The main voice cast includes:

Tasuku Hatanaka as Ushio

Rikiya Koyama as Tora

Mikako Komatsu as Asako

Kiyono Yasuno as MAYUKO

Keiji Fujiwara as Aotsuki

Yui Makino as Hanyū

The rest of the cast (without announced character roles) includes:

• Ai Kayano
• Maaya Sakamoto
• Ayahi Takagaki
• Aki Toyosaki
• Yuuka Nanri
• Kana Hanazawa
• Nana Mizuki

ADV Films released the earlier original video anime project, and it describes the story:

Ushio thinks that his father's talk of an ancient ancestor impaling a demon on a temple altar stone with the legendary Beast Spear is nuts, but when he finds the monster in his own basement, Ushio has to take another look at the family legend! To save his friends and family from the invading spirits, Ushio is forced to release Tora from his captivity. But will the creature prove to be worse than the curse?

Satoshi Nishimura (Trigun, Hajime no Ippo) is directing the anime at MAPPA (Rage of Bahamut Genesis) and a relatively new company, Studio VOLN. Toshiki Inoue (Chaos;HEAd, Death Note, Ranma ½) and Fujita himself are in charge of the series scripts, and Tomoko Mori (guest character designer on Garo: Honoo no Kokuin, Juden Chan) is designing the characters.

Fujita ran the manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday two decades ago from 1990 to 1996, and the manga's 33 compiled book volumes have 25 million copies in circulation. (The smaller bunko edition of the manga and other publications raise the total to 30 million.) He has since drawn a two-chapter Ushio & Tora short in 2012 to raise funds for areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake. Shogakukan is reprinting the original manga series in a complete edition starting this spring.