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Kannagi's Yamamoto to Direct 1st Live-Action Film
posted on by Egan Loo
According to a Tuesday press conference in Tokyo, popular anime director Yutaka Yamamoto (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Kannagi) will be directing a live-action film adaptation of Akira's Watashi no Yasashikunai Sempai (My Mean Sempai) romantic comedy novel. The Summer 2010 project from Phantom Film (The Place Promised in Our Early Days) will be Yamamoto's first live-action work.
The story is set on the small isolated Kyushū island of Hitokage. A high school girl named Yamako Iriomote (Umika Kawashima) loves an older student named Minami (Jingi Irie), but she cannot work up the nerve to hand him the countless love letters she wrote. However, another older boy, the "smelly, disgusting, annoying" Fuwa (Satoshi Kanada of the Hannya comedy duo), finds out about the love letters and meddles in her life. Thus, the "Mission: Love Confession to Minami-sempai" operation begins.
Akira wrote the original novel, which won the 1st Romance Novel Contest's Love Story Prize. Akira also wrote the science-fiction comedy novels that inspired the Kyōran Kazoku Nikki television anime series.
Source: Cinema Topics via Nippon Cinema, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
