A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 will have Nagi Umino trying to figure out what to do with Erika Amano, Hiro Segawa, and his “sister” Sachi Umino now that Nagi’s long-lost “first love” Ai Mochizuki has entered the picture. But when will Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2 come out?
The studio and main staff making A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 haven’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the anime project was produced in a collaboration between Japanese animation companies Studio SynergySP and Studio Shin-Ei Animation.
In recent times, Studio SynergySP has animated TV shows like The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? and Battle Game in 5 Seconds, whereas Studio Shin-Ei Animation is best known for Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, and the Teasing Master Takagi-san anime.
The first season of the A Couple of Cuckoos anime was helmed by chief director Hiroaki Akagi (Teasing Master Takagi-san, Those Snow White Notes) and main director Yoshiyuki Shirahata (Great Pretender, episode director for Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle). Writer Yasuhiro Nakanishi (Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun) wrote the scripts.
Artist Aya takano (Teasing Master takagi-san) was the character designer. Mayumi Watanabe and Shouko Hagiwara were the chief animation directors. Composer Rei Ishizuka (King of Prism, The Orbital Children) created the music.
The A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 OP (opening) and ED (ending) theme song music hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the A Couple of Cuckoos OP “Kekoboko” was performed by Kiyoe Yoshioka, while the ED “Shikaku Unemi” was performed by Sangatsu no Phantasia. Starting with Episode 13, the A Couple of Cuckoos Part 2 OP “Glitter” was performed by sumika, while the Part 2 ED “HELLO HELLO HELLO” was performed by Eir Aoi.
The first season of A Couple of Cuckoos was streaming in Spring/Summer 2022 with English subtitles on Crunchyroll and Netflix Japan (not Netflix USA, Hulu, Funimation, or Amazon Prime Video). This international exclusivity was due to the fact that Crunchyroll was one of the producers and not just a streaming rights holder.
The first season of the TV show was a two-cour anime series. What’s a “cour,” you might ask? For those unfamiliar with the lingo, a “cour” is a three-month block of TV broadcasting based on the physical seasons usually composed of 10 to 13 episodes.
In this case, it was not split-cour, which is where a single anime season takes a multi-month break before resuming TV broadcasting, but it did have an odd broadcasting schedule.
That’s due to the first episode premiering in late April 2022 whereas Kakkou no Iinazuke Episode 13 started streaming in late July 2022. On September 13, 2022, the official website for the A Couple of Cuckoos anime revealed that the series will get a one-hour final episode (effectively, A Couple of Cuckoos Episodes 23 and 24) on October 1, 2022.
The first season’s finale, A Couple of Cuckoos Episode 24, was released on October 1, 2022.
According to the official website, the 24 episodes will be released as eight A Couple of Cuckoos Blu-Ray/DVD volumes (Volume 8 will contain a bonus video).
- Updated September 12, 2022: A Couple of Cuckoos Episodes 23 and 24 airing back-to-back.
This article provides everything that is known about A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 (Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain
Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2 release date predictions: Renewal uncertain?
As of the last update, Studio SynergySP, Studio Shin-Ei Animation, Crunchyroll, Kodansha, Kadokawa, or any company related to the production of the anime has not officially confirmed the A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 release date. Nor has the production of a Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2 sequel been announced.
Once the news is officially confirmed this article will be updated with the relevant information.
In the meantime, it’s possible to speculate about when, or if, the Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2 release date will occur in the future.
The A Couple of Cuckoos reviews have been good but not great. The professional critics have been harsher than the anime fandom, but the series hasn’t been standing out in the crowded rom-com arena.
Part of the problem is the slow plot progression that makes it come off more as a slice-of-life anime rather than a harem rom-com. This slow-burn approach to storytelling is probably offputting since audiences are looking for action in this genre, not relaxation.
Despite featuring a tsundere Tiktok influencer, the characters lack the charisma to generate enough drama. The oblivious everyman Nagi may be studious but romantic progression measured in studying is fairly boring to watch.
Worse, Nagi doesn’t hit a critical juncture in his relationship development until literally 12 episodes in. Meanwhile, there have been occasional laughs to be found it’s almost nothing compared to the Kaguya-sama anime.
On other hand, since the story takes things slow Nagi comes off as a more relatable person. The brother and sister dynamic between Nagi and Sachi was realistic up until the harem plot twist. Erika and Hiro slowly fall in love with Nagi rather than jumping straight to the point.
Regardless of any negativity, the anime may have given a minor boost to the sales of the A Couple of Cuckoos manga. The series made the Oricon Top 20 manga for May 2022, but not April 2022, June 2022, or July 2022.
This boost appears to be minor since manga Volume 12 just happened to come out in May 2022, which explains why it was in the Top 20 for only one month. By comparison, the Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie anime gave its respective manga a major boost since it made the Oricon Top 20 in both April and May 2022. The SPY x FAMILY manga also dominated the charts the entire season due to the popularity of its anime adaptation, although that series is an extreme outlier similar to Tokyo Revengers.
The streaming popularity on Crunchyroll also seemed to be lackluster. Despite being a Crunchyroll streaming exclusive, the A Couple of Cuckoos anime was usually not near the top of Crunchyroll’s popular anime list.
Considering the combination of mediocre reviews and popularity indicators, it’s uncertain whether the anime production committee will have A Couple of Cuckoos renewed for a second season. A Couple of Cuckoos Part 2 will really need to turn around the reviews in order for the second season to have a great chance at being greenlit for production, although it could be argued that less popular series have been renewed with worse reviews.
Still, if it’s unusual for a rom-com to be given two cours, it’s practically unheard of for a producer to plan out a second season in advance (SPY x FAMILY Season 2 might be an exception to this rule since it was super-popular as a manga even before the manga super boosted the series). Pre-production involves planning and scheduling the studio, staff, and cast before the actual animation work begins in earnest.
Therefore, even in the best-case scenario where the producer starts pre-production in 2022, it’s predicted that there will be a multi-year wait for the A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 release date.
A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 English dub release date
Crunchyroll’s A Couple of Cuckoos English dub release date for the first season was on May 7, 2022, which was only two weeks behind the series premiere on April 24, 2022.
Here was Crunchyroll’s A Couple of Cuckoos dub cast:
- Nicholas Andrew Louie as Nagi Umino
- Lindsay Sheppard as Erika Amano
- AmaLee as Hiro Segawa
- Bryn Apprill as Sachi Umino
- Marissa Lenti as Namie Umino
- Gianni Matragrano as Yohei Umino
- David J. Dixon as Soichiro Amano
- Monica Rial as Ritsuko Amano
- Shawn Gann as Shibata
Here is the Japanese dub cast for Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 1:
- Kaito Ishikawa — Nagi Umino
- Akari Kito — Erika Amano
- Nao Toyama — Hiro Segawa
- Konomi Kohara — Sachi Umino
- Toshiyuki Morikawa — Souichirou Amano
- Yukiko Aruga — Rituko Amano
- Ryohei Kimura — Youhei Umino
- Yoko Hikasa — Namie Umino
Presumably, now that Funimation is being phased out by Sony, Crunchyroll’s A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 English dub release date will be announced in the future after Kakkou no Iinazuke Season 2 has first premiered with Japanese audio and English subtitles.
Hopefully, future English dubbing will be faster once the COVID pandemic winds down and becomes endemic. In order to protect voice actors from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, they were forced to temporarily pause production or take extra safety precautions that resulted in slowed work.
Many English dubbing houses have experienced delays since voice actors often travel to the recording studio. By mid-2022 Crunchyroll began switching from remote recording to in-studio recording again (most of the work is done in their Texas studio).
A Couple of Cuckoos manga compared to the anime
The story for the anime TV show is based on the Kakkou no Iinazuke manga series by Miki Yoshikawa. It was originally just a one-shot manga story released in September 2019 but the reception was so good that it began serialization in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine in January 2020.
Even the first volume sold out in stores in Japan, which is probably the reason the producers greenlit the series for an anime adaptation so quickly.
When the anime premiered in Spring 2022 there were already over 100 chapters released. The manga refers to the chapters as “fowls”.
The series releases around five volumes per year. As of October 17, 2022, the manga was up to A Couple of Cuckoos Volume 14, which includes up through Chapter 123. The A Couple of Cuckoos Volume 14 release date was delayed from September 2022.
Kodansha USA is releasing the A Couple of Cuckoos manga’s English translation in North America. The English version is up to Volume 9 as of September 27, 2022.
When an anime studio adapts a rom-com manga the chapters are often adapted out of order in order to group similar plot threads. Sometimes self-contained chapters will be outright skipped in order to reach the best stopping point in the story.
Surprisingly, the A Couple of Cuckoos anime did none of those things and stayed true to the source material. Manga fans were happy with the first cour, although they also lamented their opinion that the manga’s story started to fall apart in newer chapters as Nagi transformed into the stereotypically indecisive harem protagonist starting with manga Chapter 28.
It was definitely a tonal shift since it made the leap from the typical brother-sister relationship to Nagi’s romantic vision where he realized he was literally in love with everyone. It’s bad enough that Nagi realizes that he’s living in a harem rom-com with three love interests…including his (non-biological) sister. But then the A Couple of Cuckoos manga throws yet another girl into the mix!
(On a side note, the anime didn’t do a good job of explaining to international audiences why Hiro Segawa is “engaged” to the family shrine. While the anime does explain that she’s set to inherit the duties of the shrine, what’s not explained is that only male priests are allowed to lead a shrine. Thus, in order for Hiro to inherit the family shrine, she must marry a priest. That point is perfectly obvious to a Japanese viewer, but without understanding the cultural context Hiro’s “engagement” doesn’t make much sense.)
This was one of the few anime TV series where ending with Episode 12 in a single cour would have been extremely awkward. It definitely would have left audiences feeling unsatisfied by leaving them hanging with Nagi pondering a harem ending with all 3 girls. It certainly didn’t offer any plot resolution when Nagi tells Erika, “I don’t like you either, yet.”
To reach the best stopping in only a single cour would have required hitting the turbo button on the adaptation pacing, which wouldn’t have made anyone happy since the characters needed time to develop. The first two episodes only adapted one chapter each and Episode 12 ended by adapting Chapter 28. As such, the anime’s first cour adapted an average of 2.5 chapters per episode.
All in all, as predicted the first season’s finale, A Couple of Cuckoos Episode 24, found a stopping point corresponding to the ending of Volume 7: Chapter 60. However, in order to pull that off Episode 24 adapted Chapter 56 but then skipped right over Chapters 57, 58, and 59!
Chapter 60 was the best stopping point for the first season since the mid-summer story arc finishes with all of the girls coming to the realization that “first girl” Erika really is Nagi’s fiancee based on the way he treats her when she fell ill.
Still, the finale would have been better if it had shown how Hiro Segawa has also moved into the (harem?) household. The anime also could have finished by giving a cameo to Nagi’s first crush, Ai Mochizuki.
The good news is that there is plenty of source material available for making A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2. Better yet, English-only manga readers who wish to read ahead of the anime can jump straight to manga Volume 8.
A Couple of Cuckoos 2 spoilers (plot summary/synopsis)
While out shopping with Erika one day, Hiro Segawa is suddenly and mysteriously abducted! Nagi feels he has no choice but to act, so he grabs Hiro’s hand…and decides to elope?!
To make things even more confusing, Nagi’s long-lost childhood friend (and first love) Ai Mochizuki is back from China. Ai-chan has become a talented singer and now she says she has an answer to what he asked her back then…
When they were both children, Nagi and Ai were neighbors and he was the first person to appreciate her singing. When Ai’s family prepared to move away, the young Nagi cutely asked Ai to marry him, but she responded she would give him an answer the next time they met. So you can pretty much see where this is going.
Unfortunately, anime fans will have to wait until the A Couple of Cuckoos Season 2 release date to watch what happens next. Stay tuned!