VIZ Media has acquired the North American and international streaming rights for the Mao TV anime series. The anime will begin streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America on April 4, 2026. It will also premiere in Japan on the same date and is slated to run for two consecutive cours.
Variety also reports that VIZ Media will have TV, home video, electronic sell-through and video-on-demand rights in North America, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. The company also licensed Rooster Fighter for streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
Teruo Sato (Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Season 1) is directing the anime series, with Yuko Kakihara (Blue Box) as series composer and Yoshihito Hishinuma (Inuyasha, Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon animation character designer) as character designer and chief animation director. Sunrise is in charge of the animation production.
Meanwhile, the anime’s previously announced voice cast stars:
- • Yuki Kaji as Mao
- • Natsumi Kawaida as Nanoka Kiba
- • Hiro Shimono as Hyakka
- • Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Kamon
- • Momoka Terasawa as Otoya
- • Kazuyuki Okitsu as Shiranui
- • Motoko Kumai as Funa Uozumi
- • Yoko Hikasa as Tenko
- • Risa Shimizu as Sana
- • Reina Ueda as Yurako
- • Takashi Matsuyama as Byoki
Rumiko Takahashi’s dark fantasy adventure manga series debuted in Shogakukan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday on May 8, 2019 and has released 28 tankobon volumes as of April 2026. VIZ Media publishes the manga in English.
Mao is the latest anime adaptation of a Takahashi title, following the 1989 Ranma ½ series, Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura, Rin-ne, and Maison Ikkoku, as well as the 2024 Ranma 1/2 and 2022 Urusei Yatsura remakes.
©高橋留美子／小学館／「MAO」製作委員会
Hulu describes the main synopsis of the Mao as:
Mao, a young mystic who lives in the Taisho period of early 1900s Japan, is a mysterious onmyoji who, after suffering a life-altering curse, has continued to live for nine hundred long years. His world becomes even stranger when he meets Nanoka Kiba, a junior high schooler who seems to have traveled from the future. In spite of her tender years, Nanoka has lived a strange life herself, marked by her traumatic experience as a young child losing both her parents to a grisly accident.
But when Nanoka decides to return to that fateful shopping arcade, she is transported to another time and place. A world where supernatural ayakashi thrive in an era long before her own.
There she meets Mao, whose abrupt and bizarre question prompts Nanoka to see herself and her curious life in a completely new light.
Now the two travelers from different worlds unite as they take on the dark powers that grip both their lives.
Sources: Variety (Naman Ramachandran), press release
