Los Angeles based food truck Okamoto Kitchen unveiled the first official trailer and voice cast for its upcoming crowdfunded OVA series of the same name. The 10-episode English dubbed webtoon OVA will premiere on YouTube for free this coming U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on November 23, 2023.
The voice cast for the Okamoto Kitchen anime includes:
- • Cristina Vee as Haru Umesaki
- • Allegra Clark as Chef Chizuru
- • Patrick Seymour as Mickey
- • Faye Mata as Ling
- • Kimlinh Tran as Honey
Takuya Saitou (The Fire Hunter character design), Azusa “ASA” Saito, and PN ‘Kotobukisuzu’ are serving as the character designers. Saitou previously designed the food truck’s mascot character Haru-chan, who is the lead character in the OVA series. Mykal Williams and Rafael Hernán are writing the story, with Hidehito Ikumo composing the series’ musical score. Musical duo Layla Lane are performing the main theme song featured in episode 0.
Magic Bus is in charge of the OVA series’ layout, key animation, and general animation production. Studio Nine Lives is handling the paint and in-between animation. Industry Visual Effects is credited with the previsualization, CGI, and composition for the series.
Okamoto Kitchen will also be screened at Anime NYC on November 18, 2023 at 2:30 PM EST in Panel Room 3 — Room 1E16. A teaser trailer of the series was initially released this past June as well.
The Kickstarter crowdfunding project for the OVA series raised US$65,614 beyond its initial US$48,000 goal in March 2018. A total of 725 backers supported the campaign, which reached a stretch goal of US$57,000 in order to create a Japanese dub with English subtitles.
Each episode of the OVA series will be three to five minutes long, and will have limited animation. Other stretch goals for the campaign included extending the series to 24 episodes at US$98,000, extended episodes spanning eight to 10 minutes at US$149,000, and a 22-minute fully animated OVA at US$340,000.
Okamoto Kitchen describes the synopsis of its OVA series as:
The food truck industry is a brutal world! Savage races for parking spots, epic shonen food battles, and lots and lots of VIDEO GAMES! The naive Okamoto Kitchen food truck team of Haru, Chizuru, Mickey and Honey try their best to navigate their way around the unforgiving landscape of the Los Angeles food truck scene. Our heroes will have to push through the growing pains not only to figure out how to thrive in the food truck business, but to also discover who really has their best interests at heart. The culinary arts can sometimes be hard to digest.
Source: Okamoto Kitchen Official Twitter, Okamoto Kitchen Official YouTube
