Mizuki Nana and Hirano Aya will star together in White Album, an idol anime to air beginning in January 2009.The anime is based on a PC game of which a PS3 version will also come out next year. The story involves Yuki (Hirano, in red), a new idol whose career increases the distance between her and her boyfriend. Rina (Mizuki, in white) is already a top idol, and the show will follow the evolution of the relationship between the two.The story is set in 1986, during the Japanese "bubble" period. The economy was about to reach its peak for a while and then crash.This is being billed as a "dream battle" between the two seiyuus. Here's hoping it brings their fans closer together, rather than driving them even further apart. No doubt the producers expect a bonanza from character CDs.Since their singing styles are so different -- Nana's is much more polished and Aya's rocks more -- I look forward to seeing whether the music producers can make this combination work. The same goes for their acting styles, with Nana's more conventional and Aya's more idiosyncratic and harder for other seiyuus to blend in with. Here's hoping this will be a fruitful combination rather than a disastrous one.Seven Arcs (Nanoha, Sekirei) will be the company in charge of animation production. Director will be Yoshida Taizou 吉田泰三, who did key animation on Eureka Seven and other shows, and storyboarded and directed several episodes each of Nanoha StrikerS and Otogijushi Akazukin, but who is a first-time director here. Music by Elements Garden.Here is a Japanese site describing both the game and the anime.
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