The Fable Season 2 casts Koichi Yamadera as Yamaoka, the "Producer of Death," for a January 2027 return on Nippon TV

According to Koichi Yamadera, the part came with the author's blessing. The veteran actor, newly cast as the crime syndicate executive Yamaoka in the second season of The Fable, has said that director Ryosuke Takahashi told him manga creator Katsuhisa Minami had wanted Yamadera's voice for the role.

Yamaoka is the axis of the new season, which adapts the Yamaoka arc of Minami's manga. Within the Boss's organization he is the lone executive who can push back on the Boss as a peer, and his reputation has earned him the nickname "Producer of Death." The season's main visual, released alongside the casting on October 13, places him grinning over the shoulder of Akira Sato, flanked by two of his assassins, while Yoko levels a pistol and Misaki appears nearby.

Six new players

Yamadera, whom MyAnimeList's report credits for Yozakura-san Chi no Daisakusen, heads a group of six additions:

• Takanori Hoshino as Azami, Yamaoka's immediate underling
• Hiroyuki Yoshino as a killer trained in Yamaoka's line
• Satoshi Mikami as Koji Mizuno, a syndicate executive who sits beneath Soichi Sunakawa in the hierarchy
• Taiten Kusunoki as Jiro, a hitman working freelance
• Seiyu Fujiwara as Suzumushi, a champion of underground fights

The core trio is unchanged: Kazuyuki Okitsu returns as Akira, while Yoko is again played by Miyuki Sawashiro and Misaki by Kana Hanazawa.

When it airs

Nippon TV will carry the season starting in January 2027. Anime.com and AnimeTV give the date as Saturday, January 9; MyAnimeList lists the weekly slot as 12:55 a.m. on Sundays, so the premiere lands in the small hours after Saturday night, which puts January 10 on the calendar. Overseas streaming for Season 2 has not been announced. The first season was simulcast with subtitles and dubs: American viewers got it through Hulu, while Disney+ carried it across Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and dozens more territories.

The team, and the story so far

Takahashi, whose long career includes Armored Trooper Votoms, is back in the director's chair at Tezuka Productions. Yuya Takashima again oversees the series composition and shares script duties with Mayumi Morita, and Kyuma Oshita and Saki Hasegawa are credited for character design.

The first season ran for 25 episodes from April 7, 2024. It follows a contract killer so efficient he can finish a job inside six seconds, who is ordered by his boss to put down his guns for a full year and pass as an ordinary citizen under the alias Akira Sato.

Minami's original manga appeared in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine for five years, November 2014 through November 2019, and took the general category of the 41st Kodansha Manga Awards in 2017. A sequel, The Fable: The Second Contact, followed between mid-2021 and mid-2023, and a third series, The Fable: The Third Secret, began in March 2025, with its sixth volume due on November 6. Kodansha USA completed its English release of the first series with volume 22 in January 2024.