New High School! Kimengumi Anime Brings Back Kenichi Ogata as Principal

The staff for the new television anime of Motoei Shinzawa‘s High School! Kimengumi (High School! Funny-Face Club) manga announced on Wednesday that Kenichi Ogata is reprising his role as principal Sakio Kochō from the original 1985 anime. 

The anime will debut on January 9 and will air on Fuji TV‘s Noitamina programming block on Fridays at 11:30 p.m.

The gag comedy centers on a group of five idiosyncratic, wacky students, known in the school halls as Kimengumi, who all befriend the cutest girl in school and her best friend. Whereas the original manga (and its first television anime) were set in the 1980s, this new anime will set the story in the modern Reiwa era with a new cast.

The new anime stars:

Kazuaki Seki (live-action Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, Faking Beethoven, music videos for Perfume and Gen Hoshino) is directing his first anime at Animation Studio Seven with Takashi Nishikawa (Strange+, Nobunaga Teacher’s Young Bride) serving as the animation director. Shigeru Murakoshi (Zombie Land Saga, The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse) is overseeing the series scripts, and Yuka Abe (animation director on Fire Force, Full Dive) is designing the characters. Night Tempo is producing the project’s songs, and Slow Curve is planning and producing the project.

Rikon Densetsu performs the ending theme song “Suteki!!,” and BREIMEN will perform the opening theme song “Funky Spice feat. TOMOO.”

The first anime’s theme song “Ushiroyubi Sasaregumi” gets a cover version by Haruka Shiraishi and Ikumi Hasegawa, and is given a modern rearrangement by Night Tempo.

The original story began in Shueisha‘s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine as the 3-Nen Kimengumi (Third-Year Funny-Face Club) manga in September 1980. When the characters graduated from junior high school to high school, the story changed its title to High School! Kimengumi, and continued running from 1982 to 1987.

The first television anime aired for 86 episodes between 1985 and 1987, and its hit nationwide success spawned a film in 1986 with the working English title Teenage Masked Tribe.

REMOW offered the first anime with English subtitles for the first time on YouTube this past summer.

Sources: High School! Kimengumi anime’s X/Twitter account, Comic Natalie