The historical anime is set to wow viewers this summer.
The official website and social media accounts for the upcoming historical Noh theatre anime “World is Dancing” have unveiled its main promotional video, additional cast, and premiere date of 2 July, 2026.
The series will air across nine Japanese stations, although a global premiere is yet to be confirmed.
The main promotional video:
Who are the additional cast members of World is Dancing?
The additional cast members are:
- Sakurai Takahiro as Ashikaga Yoshimitsu
- Hideta Nobuo as Nijo Yoshimasa
- Mamiko Noto as Goko
- Inori Minase as Chiharu
- Hatsuki Seto as Satsuki
The rest of the cast members are:
- Yugiri Hanamori as Oniyasha
- Simba Tsuchiya as Ishiya
- Maaya Uchida as Kogane
- Romi Park as Masujiro
- Katsuyuki Konishi as Kanoami
- Haruki Ishiya as Junigorou
Who are the staff members behind World is Dancing?
Toshimasa Kuroyanagi directs the anime at CygamesPictures, with Keigo Sasaki designing the characters. Sawako Kawamitsu handles series composition and script.
Additional staff includes Shuuhei Fuchimoto as assistant director, Iori Hisatake as sub character designer, and Odashi as prop designer. Hiromasa Ogura and Kazuhiro Inoue serve as art directors, with Mamio Ogawa as art designer.
Reijirou Tsumura oversees Noh movement, while Kaiji Moriyama and Mikiko Kawamura handle choreography. Kohei Kawaguchi is credited for Noh supervision, and Katsuyuki Shimizu serves as historical supervisor.
Naoko Satou and Kumiko Naruke are in charge of color design, with Yoshinori Nakano as 3D director and Yuutarou Kikuchi as director of photography. Daisuke Hiraki edits the series, Yukio Nagasaki serves as sound director, and Daisuke Shinoda composes the music.
What is World is Dancing about?
The manga, written and illustrated by Kazuto Mihara, was published in Kodansha’s Morning magazine from March 2021 to October 2022. The story is a fictional account of the life of Zaemi Motokiyo/Oniyasha, a pivotal figure in the Japanese Noh drama form’s development in the 14th century.
Kodansha publishes the series in English, and describes the plot as:
Born into a life of acting and dance with a traveling theatre troupe in 14th-century Japan, 12-year old Oniyasha has one problem-he doesn’t know what the point of any of it is. Why must I step with the left foot here instead of the right? Why is one performance good and another, bad? Why do people dance at all? It all seems perfectly arbitrary, until a chance encounter in a run-down shack sets him down a path to revolutionizing the art form and influencing much of Japanese culture to come.