A TV anime sequel to the soccer manga Aoashi, whose first season aired in spring 2022, has been announced: ‘Aoashi Season2’ will begin airing on NHK Educational TV on October 4, 2026, in the Sunday 5 p.m. slot—the very hour families gather to watch live sports. Composer Masaru Yokoyama, who has turned the manga’s heat into sound from the start, is confirmed to return for the score. After roughly four years, “the sound of that pitch” is coming back, and for soundtrack fans the news about the OST already eclipses the broadcast date itself.
A Four-Year-Later Sequel, with Yokoyama Back on Music
‘Aoashi Season2’ centers on the “A-Team arc,” in which protagonist Ashito Aoi finally aims for promotion to the top squad of the prestigious youth club Tokyo City Esperion. Kazuki Yokoyama directs, Masahiro Yokotani handles series composition, and TMS Entertainment produces. The rock band 10-FEET performs the opening theme, while singer-songwriter Higuchi Ai takes the ending. How the score—the foundation beneath those songs—will hold the “heat” and “delicacy” of the theme tunes is a real question, and having Yokoyama’s name attached matters. The first season’s soundtrack was a hefty two-disc, 57-track set that captured the tactical duels on the pitch and the boys’ growth through the twin engines of orchestra and beat. How that vocabulary is updated in Season2 is the first thing to listen for.
Masaru Yokoyama—A Composer Who Shuttles Between Orchestra and Electronica
Masaru Yokoyama was born in 1982 in Nagano Prefecture. He began composing with synthesizers and computers in junior high and stepped into screen music while still studying composition at Kunitachi College of Music. His credits are remarkably broad: the anime Your Lie in April, the Chihayafuru live-action film trilogy starring Suzu Hirose, and the NHK morning drama Warotenka, among many others. He is also known for writing songs for idols including Momoiro Clover Z, and makes worldwide recording sessions and sound-building from his own sampled materials his life’s work. Moving freely between a live orchestra and electronics—that shuttle motion is Yokoyama’s signature. Aoashi is its purest expression, where tense strings mesh with hard rhythms so that the speed of a match becomes sound itself.
How Will the Sound Change in the “A-Team Arc”?
Shifting the stage from a youth academy to the top team means the score, too, steps up a rank. If Season 1 was the music of “a boy noticing his talent and searching for his place,” Season2 should be the music of “a young man standing at the door to the pros, fighting with tactical vision as his weapon”—lower-centered rhythms, more finely woven ensembles, and orchestral strikes that detonate at decisive moments. Yokoyama is precisely the composer to paint those differences in temperature. The broadcast starts in October, but there is plenty to wait for: the OST’s release format, streaming, and whether there will be new recordings or arrangements carried over from Season 1. As a summer that inherits “the sound of soccer,” this is a title to place at the very top of the fall 2026 soundtrack watch-list.
Why This Is Worth Following for the Score in Fall 2026
Sports-anime music is not just about swelling up at the moment of victory or defeat. The quiet tension before a match, the conflict on the bench, the breathing behind the sound of pounding footsteps—how those “blank spaces” are scored is what gives a work its persuasiveness. What Yokoyama showed in Season 1 was a hand that visualized the psychological duels on the pitch through silence and minimal sound rather than leaning on flashy anthems. The A-Team, the stage of Season2, is a battlefield crowded with talent, and the process of weaving individual sounds into a collective sound is exactly where a score proves its craft. What kind of bridge Yokoyama’s music will build between the contrasting theme songs of 10-FEET and Higuchi Ai is the question. With about two and a half months until broadcast, the best way to wait is to revisit the Season 1 soundtrack.
