Two Anime-Song Veterans on One Opening Theme
Hironobu Kageyama and Masami Okui have been colleagues for years in JAM Project, the anime-song supergroup that has supplied theme songs across two decades of tokusatsu and anime. Between them, they are responsible for two songs most anime fans can hum on demand. Kageyama sang "Cha-La Head-Cha-La," the first Dragon Ball Z opening. Okui performed "Rinbu Revolution," the opening to Revolutionary Girl Utena. For Welsh & Shedar they share vocals on the opening theme "Bokura no Mirai e" ("Toward Our Future"), which Kageyama wrote and composed himself, with arrangement by Shiho Terada.
Kageyama takes the ending theme, "Omuretsu" ("Omelette"), on his own. Welsh, the series' 16-year-old lead, is a village boy whose main hobby is cooking. There is also an insert song, "I'm in You," performed by Kageyama with the singer KUKO. Kenichi Sudo arranged both of those tracks.
In his official comment, Kageyama said he wanted the opening to cheer the two leads on through their journey while still carrying some of the French flavor of the original material. He made it a mid-tempo number and brought Okui in to duet. Okui called the pairing an honor and described the melody as gentle but strong, the kind that pulls a listener into the story. Portions of both songs can be heard in the new main trailer, which went up on the Dream Catcher YouTube channel alongside footage of Zabel's push to conquer the world and several fight sequences.
Zabel, Joris and Bechamel Fill Out the Cast
The same announcement introduced three supporting characters. Japanese gaming and anime site Dengeki Online published their profiles from the production's press release.
Yūko Kaida (Sylvia Sherwood in Spy x Family) voices Zabel, queen of the Kingdom of Bonta and ruler of three of the continent's countries. The character profile gives her age as 36 and describes her as charismatic, cold-blooded and a capable fighter in her own right. She already holds five of the six Dofus that exist in the world, and she means to use them to unify it under her rule. Bonta is also Shedar's kingdom, which places one of the two leads inside the regime the other ends up fighting.
Makoto Furukawa (Saitama in One-Punch Man) plays Joris, the guide who pulls Welsh into the adventure and doubles as his teacher. Joris is a hero who once brought a nation-defining conflict to a close. He belongs to a species that stays physically small but lives a very long time, so his age goes unlisted, and he is a familiar character from the Dofus games.
Risa Kageyama voices Bechamel, a mischievous, free-spirited cat-person girl who has been Welsh's best friend since childhood. She runs the market stall next to his and tags along on the journey. She is also Hironobu Kageyama's daughter, a connection she confirmed publicly in 2014. Her earlier anime work includes Recca and the young Gauche Adlai in Black Clover.
The two leads were announced earlier this month: Rikuya Yasuda as Welsh and Yūki Kaji as Shedar.
An Ankama Story, Animated in Japan
Welsh & Shedar is not an adaptation. It is an original series built inside the world of Dofus, Ankama's long-running French MMORPG. The Dofus themselves are legendary items said to hold divine power and to have created the world, and their power becomes a great good or a terrible evil depending on who wields it. Zabel is protected by Azalar, a dragon described as the incarnation of the Ebony Dofus, and her subjects have their life force siphoned off without knowing it. Welsh's quiet rural life ends when Azalar attacks and Joris shows up to save him.
Naoki Horiuchi directs at Studio Massket, with Saori Nakashiki on character design, Eri Suzuki on color design and Jun Watanabe as sound director. Tot is credited with the original work, screenplay and series composition concept, with Kenichi Yamashita handling the Japanese-language series composition. Pierre-Jean Beaudoin and Jose Pavli score the series, which Ankama produces with Studio Dream Catcher.
The project has already been out in front of audiences twice. Episode 1 screened at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in May 2025, and the first two episodes got a world premiere at Japan Expo Paris on July 12, 2026, in Japanese with French subtitles.
Looking Ahead
Welsh & Shedar starts October 2, 2026 on TOKYO MX, the Tokyo-area broadcaster, airing Fridays at 21:25 JST. English-language databases list the run at 12 episodes, though neither the source article nor the official site confirms a count.
No international streaming partner has been announced, and there is no word yet on an English or French broadcast, which is the odd part given that Ankama is a French company and the series premiered in France before it aired in Japan. Because this is an original story rather than a manga adaptation, there is no source book to read in English in the meantime.