Atom the Beginning Anime Reveals Premiere Date, New Key Visual

The official website for the television anime adaptation of Tetsuro Kasahara's Atom The Beginning manga revealed a new key visual and the anime's premiere date on Tuesday. The series will premiere at 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 15 on NHK. The first episode will then stream on Amazon Prime Video in Japan at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 16.

The anime will have a stage event on March 26 at the AnimeJapan 2017 event in Tokyo. Nakamura, Inoue, Sakurai, Komatsu, and Sakura will attend the event.

Atom The Beginning's story takes place in Japan after a great calamity. There were two geniuses who dreamed of the future. One was Umatarō Tenma. The other was Hiroshi Ochanomizu. The two labored day and night in robot research — Tenma to create a "god," and Ochanomizu to create a "friend." Thus a robot, A106, was born from their collaborative friendship. Would A106 really become a god, or a friend? The manga and anime tell a prequel story leading up to the birth of Astro Boy.

The show stars:
Yūichi Nakamura (Fairy Tail's Gray Fullbuster) as Umatarō Tenma

Takuma Terashima (Durarara!!'s Saburou Togusa) as Hiroshi Ochanomizu

Yūki Inoue (Tenshi no 3P's Kyō Mekui) as A106 (pronounced "A-ten-six")

Takahiro Sakurai (Code Geass' Suzaku Kururugi) as Moriya Tsutsumi

Mikako Komatsu (Fuuka's Sara Iwami) as Motoko Tsutsumi

Ayane Sakura (Love Live!'s Arisa Ayase) as Ran Ochanomizu

Kengo Kawanishi (Aldnoah.Zero's Kisaki Matsuribi) as Kensaku Han

Nobuo Tobita (Hakuōki's Keisuka Sannan) as Shunsaku Han

Yoshino Nanjō (Love Live!'s Eli Ayase) as Maria

Nanjō will also perform the ending theme song "Hikari no Hajimari" (The Beginning of Light). The musical duo After the Rain will perform the opening theme song "Kaidoku Funō" (Indecipherable).

Katsuyuki Motohiro (Psycho-Pass, live-action Ajin film) is serving as chief director, and Tatsuo Sato (Bodacious Space Pirates, Martian Successor Nadesico) is directing the series in cooperation with Tezuka Productions. Osamu Tezuka's son, Makoto Tezuka, is in charge of project planning cooperation and supervision, and Masami Yuuki (Patlabor franchise, Birdy the Mighty) is credited with concept works. OLM, Production I.G, and Signal.MD are animating the series. Jun'ichi Fujisaku (Blood+, Appleseed XIII) is overseeing the series scripts, and Takahiro Yoshimatsu (Trigun, Basquash!) is the character designer. AI researchers Hitoshi Matsubara (Future University Hakodate professor), Satoshi Kurihara (The University of Electro-Communications, Artificial Intelligence eXploration Research Center president), Hiroshi Yamakawa (Dwango Artificial Intelligence Laboratory head), and Yutaka Matsuo (University of Tokyo special associate professor) are supervising the anime.

Kasahara (Rideback) launched Atom The Beginning in Shogakukan's Monthly Hero's magazine in December 2014 as a prequel of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy manga. Tezuka's son Makoto Tezuka handles the editorial supervision of the manga, and the series is in collaboration with Tezuka Productions. Masami Yuuki (Patlabor the Mobile Police, Birdy the Mighty creator) is credited with "concept works" for the series. Shogakukan shipped the fourth volume on December 5.​