The incredibly long-running baseball-themed anime series Ace of Diamond has been confirmed as getting another season this weekend via its official X account.
The new season, which we will call Ace of Diamond: Act II (Zoku-hen) or “sequel” for want of a title being released, will follow on from the latest episode of the anime, which aired on March 31st, 2020, although no premiere date or number of episodes have yet been announced.
But with 178 episodes of the Production I.G./Madhouse anime already available to watch, and with each previous season having at between 51 and 75 episodes, this one is likely to also be another long one.
Baseball fans will be thrilled.
The history of the Ace of Diamond anime series
The anime series is based on the hit manga written and illustrated by Yuji Terajima, which originally ran from mid-2006 to early 2015 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine.
A second manga series called Ace of Diamond: Act II was then serialized from mid-2015 to October, 2022.
Both series have been published in an astounding 81 tankōbon volumes, with Kodansha USA publishing all 47 volumes of the first series in English under the title Ace of the Diamond.
They explain the manga’s plot in this way:
Eijun Sawamura had his heart set on the middle-school national baseball championships. But his team is eliminated thanks to a wild pitch thrown by Eijun himself. He’s planning to go to high school with his teammates and try again next year when he’s scouted by the famous Seido High School Baseball team.
When he goes for a campus visit, he finds himself on the receiving end of a baptism by fire! His experience forming a battery with up-and-coming catcher Miyuki rekindles his passion for baseball!!
So popular was the manga, the first Ace of Diamond anime adaptation premiered in October, 2015 and ran for a year and a half, through March, 2015 for a total of 75 episodes.
The following week, Ace of Diamond: Second Season premiered (with no break in between the two seasons), and ran until late March, 2016 for a total of 51 episodes.
The anime then took a three-year break before Ace of Diamond: Act II kicked off in April, 2019 and ran for 52 episodes until the end of March, 2020.
Now, four years later, a new Ace of Diamond season has been announced. Yay!
To celebrate the new season, mangaka Yuji Terajima released a new visual (above) showing the manga’s main characters — Sawamura, Kominato, Miyuki, Furuya and Kuramochi — all grinning happily at the news.
Staff for new Ace of Diamond: Act II (Zoku-hen) series
There is no word yet on the director of the upcoming new Ace of Diamond: Act II (Zoku-hen) anime, or on any of the other staff members or cast.
Studio-wise, let’s hope Madhouse returns, as they did such a stellar job with the previous seasons.
We will update you here on Leo Sigh as soon as more information comes out, but fingers crossed we get a full manga adaptation, and not the skipping that occurred in the previous season.
But… so many years after the last Ace of Diamond episode ended, this is damned exciting, isn’t it?
Update: May 15th, 2025 — Diamond no Ace: Act II Second Season gets a new visual and a premiere date (sort of!)