The sports anime “Chihayafuru” series has been confirmed for a third season at a voice actor stage presentation held for the “Chihayafuru in Awara Week” event and is set for NTV’s late-night AnichU programming block and on other channels in 2019.
“Chihayafuru” first began in 2007 as a manga series written and illustrated by Yuki Suetsugu, serialised in Be Love and published by Kodansha. The manga currently has thirty-six volumes and had been adapted into an anime in October 2011. It ran for a total twenty-five episodes before ending in March 2012. The second season for the series later came out in January 2013 and ran until June 2013 with a total of 25 episodes plus an OVA.
Outside of the anime and manga works, the series was also inspired three live-action films and a five-episode live-action tie-in series, titled “Chihayafuru:Tsunagu.”
In the course of its run the manga has had more than 21 million copies in printed in Japan and will be having an English digital release under Kodansha Comics. With the manga series, when it released 22nd volume, it had also bundled an original anime DVD.
The story of the series tells of the beautiful and headstrong Chihaya Ayase. When she was young, a gifted transfer student named Arata introduced her to the game of karuta, a card game inspired by classical Japanese poetry, and she fell in love with it. Upon entering into high school, she reunites with her childhood friend Taichi, Chihaya dreams of finding Arata and the three resuming their love of karuta.
When she does discover Arata however, she finds that he had quit the game due to personal reasons but Chihaya is determined not to let his passion go to waste. As such she and Taichi decide to form the Mizusawa High School Karuta Club. With their club and in playing karuta, they learn that like with life, working toward your dreams is the key to winning, even when what you want seems just out of reach.
There is no confirmation for the staff, but it has been confirmed that the three main cast of the series will be returning for their roles as follows:
Asami Seto as Chihaya Ayase
Mamoru Miyano as Taichi Mashima
Yoshimasa Hosoya as Arata Wataya
Source: AnimeNewsNetwork