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Kindaichi Case Files Manga Gets 1st Live-Action Series in 13 Years
posted on by Egan Loo
The detective manga Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo (Kindaichi Case Files or The File of Kindaichi) is inspiring its first live-action television series in about 13 years. Ryōsuke Yamada of the boy band Hey! Say! JUMP will reprise the title role of Hajime Kindaichi in Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo N (neo) on Saturdays this July. He already played the young detective in two previous television specials in 2013 and 2014.
Returning from Yamada's previous specials is Haruna Kawaguchi as Hajime's childhood friend Miyuki Nanase.
Also returning is Hey! Say! JUMP member Daiki Arioka as Mystery Club member Ryūji Saki.
Yōsuke Asari will play Makoto Makabe, the head of the Mystery Club.
Comedian Tomomitsu Yamaguchi ("Gussan") will join the cast as the fourth actor to play police inspector Isamu Kenmochi.
In the story, Hajime Kindaichi is a high school student who solves any case or mystery with his IQ of 180. He usually seems dull, but when there is a case, he demonstrates remarkable deductive skills inherited from his famous detective grandfather.
Yōzaburō Kanari and Fumiya Sato serialized the original Kindaichi Case Files manga from 1992 to 2001 in Kodansha Weekly Shōnen Magazine, and the story is back in a new manga series, Kindaichi Case Files R, that started last year. (There are also two more spinoff manga this year.) The original manga has over 90 million copies in print, and it sparked a mystery manga boom in Japan. Tokyopop published part of the manga in North America.
Yamada is the fourth actor to play Hajime Kindaichi, after KinKi Kids group member Tsuyoshi Dōmoto in 1995, Arashi member Jun Matsumoto in 2001, and KAT-TUN member Kazuya Kamenashi in 2005.
The manga inspired a television anime which ran from April 1997 to September 2000. Video Research reported that its highest ever rating in Tokyo's Kanto area was 19.0%, and it averaged 14.8%. The manga also inspired two anime films, two television anime specials in November 2007, as well as several original video anime.
The manga just inspired a new web anime from FROGMAN (Eagle Talon, Thermae Romae) in January, followed by a brand-new The File of Kindaichi Returns television anime series in April. Crunchyroll is streaming the new television anime as it airs in Japan. Like the new live-action series, the new anime series is running on Saturdays.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
