Interest
Haruna Kawaguchi to Star in Live-Action Zekkyō Gakkyū Film
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Actress Haruna Kawaguchi (Ouran High School Host Club's Haruhi, 2012 GTO's Aizawa Miyabi, Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, Moshidora) will star in the live-action film adaptation of Emi Ishikawa's Zekkyō Gakkyū (Screaming Lessons) horror shōjo manga. The film will adapt the "Yomi no Shinjitsu" (Yomi's Truth) story from volume 3 and the "Ningen Rank" (Human Rank) story from volume 8.
Alice Hirose (Maria Watches Over Us), Mayu Matsuoka (Lesson of the Evil), Haru (Maria Watches Over Us), and Mizuki Yamamoto (The Kirishima Thing) will also star in the film.
Kawaguchi plays Kana, a girl who was the idol of her class in elementary school, but after entering a private girls middle school is ranked as average in grades, athletic ability, and parentage. An urban legend at the school states that anyone who finds Yomi (played by Yamamoto) at an old school building can ask her for a wish. Yomi will grant the wish, but only in exchange for something important. Kana goes to Yomi to wish to change her situation, and the next day Kana is accepted into the group of popular girls, but in exchange her friend starts being bullied. Hirose will play the popular girl Rio.
Ishikawa's original manga follows a ghost girl named Yomi as she tells the reader various scary stories. Ishikawa began serializing the series in October 2008 and the 13th collected volume will ship in Japan on February 15. The series already received a "vomic" (voice + comic) video in 2010 starring Tomomi Kasai, Moeno Nitō, Haruka Ishida, and Reina Fujie of the female idol group AKB48, as well as several anime promotional videos. The series currently has 1.2 million copies in print.
The film is scheduled to open in Japan in early summer.
Source: Mainich Shimbun's Mantan Web
