The Leads on Wrangling Ancient Hittite Names
The Japanese news site Gadget Tsū published the interview on July 23, a few weeks into the show's broadcast run. Mirai Tachibana (Kotono Nagase in Idoly Pride) voices Yuri Suzuki, the modern-day Japanese teenager at the story's center. Wataru Katō (Reno Ichikawa in Kaiju No. 8, Rentarō Aijō in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You) plays Prince Kail.
Tachibana told the site she finds Yuri endearing, and that she was drawn to the way the heroine barges into events and shakes them up. Katō's biggest hurdle is more practical: the script is full of ancient character and place names that are hard to pronounce. He also described working to keep Kail's shifts between emotional registers smooth, so the character never sounds like a different person from scene to scene.
A 45-Year Career Finally Gets an Anime
Chie Shinohara debuted in 1981 and spent the following decades turning out suspense shōjo hits for Shogakukan, including Yami no Purple Eye (which got a live-action TV drama) and Umi no Yami, Tsuki no Kage. This year marks her 45th anniversary as a working artist, and Red River is the first of her manga to receive a TV anime.
The source material has the numbers to justify the wait. Serialized in Shogakukan's Shōjo Comic magazine from 1995 to 2002, Red River (Sora wa Akai Kawa no Hotori) runs 28 volumes, has more than 20 million copies in circulation, and won the Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōjo category in 2001. The all-female Takarazuka Revue staged a production of it in 2018.
The premise is pure portal fantasy with a historical spine. Yuri, an ordinary teenager, is pulled into a puddle by a mysterious hand and wakes up in the Hittite Empire of the 14th century BCE. There she falls in with Prince Kail, survives assassins and palace conspiracies, and comes to be revered as an incarnation of the goddess Ishtar.
Tatsunoko Handles the Adaptation
The anime is directed by Kōsuke Kobayashi at Tatsunoko Production, with Yoriko Tomita on series composition, character designs by Kenji Fujisaki, and music by Yoshihisa Hirano.
The supporting cast pits the leads against Aya Uchida as Queen Nakia, with Kōji Yusa as her servant Urhi. Shōya Chiba plays Prince Zannanza and Tomoaki Maeno voices Ilbani, Kail's aide. Hiroki Nanami pulls double duty, voicing Yuri's classmate Satoshi Himuro and performing the opening theme "Akatsuki no Sora"; Miisha Shimizu sings the ending theme "Reunion."
Looking Ahead
New episodes air in Japan every Tuesday at 25:29 (1:29 a.m. Wednesday) on Nippon TV's AnichU block, and every Wednesday at 24:00 (midnight going into Thursday) on BS NTV. Crunchyroll is streaming the series internationally.
Readers who want to get ahead of the anime have an easy on-ramp: Viz Media published all 28 volumes of the manga in English under the Red River title. And with the adaptation just getting started on a 28-volume epic, the open question is how far this first run will take Yuri's story.