Season 3's New Cast Is a Shonen Hall of Fame
The five additions, reported by Japanese anime news site Anime! Anime!, are heavy hitters even by this remake's standards. Masako Nozawa, the voice of Son Goku in Dragon Ball, joins as a character billed as the Grand Master. Mayumi Tanaka, the longtime voice of Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece, and Saori Hayami (Yor Forger in Spy x Family) take on roles the production has not revealed. Jun Fukuyama (Lelouch in Code Geass) plays Sentaro Daimonji, and Minami Tanaka rounds out the group as Tsubasa Kurenai.
Character visuals and profile text for the newcomers were released alongside the announcement, and each actor sent a comment.
Two of the Five Roles Are Still a Secret
Mayumi Tanaka says she plays an important role in the story, then adds that she is not allowed to talk about it yet. Saori Hayami is equally locked down: she says she can reveal nothing about her character, only that she was so nervous at the recording session she could hardly believe it herself, and that the cast's warmth put her at ease.
Nozawa, meanwhile, offered a tease. As the Grand Master, her character is "elegant, quiet, and ladylike... or at least, that is how it should be," she said.
Fukuyama's comment includes a fun wrinkle: he has already appeared in this remake as the drama club president, and when the Season 3 offer came in he assumed that character was returning. Then he opened the script and found Sentaro Daimonji instead. He calls the episode and character "intense and extreme," and says he performed until his throat was stinging.
For manga readers, the names are a strong signal. In Rumiko Takahashi's original, Sentaro is the heir to a school of Martial Arts Tea Ceremony, and Tsubasa is a disguise-loving admirer of Ukyo, which suggests where some of Season 3's storylines are headed. Minami Tanaka, who read the manga in elementary school, calls Tsubasa "a character with more than a few quirks" and says she cannot wait to see what kind of whirlwind the character stirs up.
The Remake So Far
Ranma 1/2 is Takahashi's martial-arts romantic comedy about Ranma Saotome, a teenage martial artist cursed to turn into a girl when splashed with cold water. The manga ran in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine from 1987 to 1996, from the creator also behind Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, and Inuyasha.
MAPPA's all-new adaptation launched in October 2024 under director Konosuke Uda, with Kimiko Ueno on series composition, character designs by Hiromi Taniguchi, and music by Kaoru Wada. A big part of its appeal has been continuity: Kappei Yamaguchi returns as Ranma, Megumi Hayashibara as his female form, and Noriko Hidaka as Akane Tendo, the same trio that led the 1989 series. Season 2 aired on Nippon TV from October 2025.
The new key visual puts Ranma, Akane, and Ryoga (voiced by Koichi Yamadera) at the center, surrounded by the characters joining in Season 3. It is a busy, brawling image that fits the show's brand of slapstick martial-arts romantic comedy.
Looking Ahead
Season 3 starts Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 24:55 on Nippon TV, Japanese TV shorthand for 12:55 a.m. the following morning, rolling out nationwide across the network's affiliates. Netflix streams new episodes exclusively right after broadcast, the same arrangement that has kept the first two seasons available to international viewers.
The second official trailer is up now on MAPPA's YouTube channel, featuring the Season 3 newcomers. Viz Media publishes the Ranma 1/2 manga in English for readers who want to get ahead of the story.