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Itazura na Kiss Shōjo Romantic Comedy Manga Gets 1st Live-Action Film
posted on by Egan Loo
A live-action film adaptation of Kaoru Tada's Itazura na Kiss manga has been green-lit for release in fall 2016. Itazura na Kiss the Movie ~High School-Hen~ (Mischievious Kiss the Movie: High School Edition) will be the first ever film of the manga, and it will include story segments that were not in the original manga.
In Tada's classic unfinished manga, a high school girl named Kotoko Aihara finally tells a fellow senior named Naoki Irie that she has loved him from afar since she saw him on their first day of high school. However, Naoki, a haughty "super-ikemen" (handsome male) with 200 IQ and sports talent, rejects her offhand. Fate intervenes when a mild earthquake ruins Kotoko's family house. While the house gets rebuilt, Kotoko and her dad stay at the home of her dad's childhood friend...whose son is Naoki.
Kanta Satō, a member of the EXILE-affiliated entertainment group Gekidan EXILE, will star as Naoki, and actress Reina Bisa will play Kotoko. Takanori Jinnai (live-action Detective Conan television movie's Kogoro Mori) will play Kotoko's father, and Hidehiko Ishizuka (20th Century Boys' Maruo, Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow's Sōsetsu Kazehana) and Hikari Ishida (Futari, Hana no Asuka-gumi!) will play Naoki's father and mother respectively. Model Shimon Ōkura and E-Girls member Nonoka Yamaguchi will also appear.
Minoru Mizoguchi, a scripwriter who has produced other Itazura na Kiss projects and a good friend of Tada's husband Shigeru Nishikawa, is directing the film.
The original manga followed Naoki and Kotoko through high school and beyond, but the manga is unfinished because Tada passed away in an accident in 1999. The popular manga ran in Shueisha's Bessatsu Margaret magazine from 1990 to 1999, and it has more than 30 million copies in print.
The story previously inspired a live-action television series in Japan in 1996, two live-action television series in Taiwan under the name It Started with a Kiss in 2005 and 2007, its first stage plays in 2008, and a live-action television series in South Korea in 2010. It also inspired a 2008 television anime. More recently, the manga received a new Japanese live-action television adaptation in 2013.
Digital Manga Inc. published the 10th manga volume in North America last year, and Discotek Media also released the 2008 television anime last year. DramaFever and Hulu streamed the first season of the most recent live-action television adaptation in 2013, and DramaFever and Crunchyroll also streamed the live-action television special Mischievous Kiss 2- Love in Okinawa (Itazura Kiss 2- Love in Okinawa) last year. Crunchyroll then streamed the second season last year.
Source: Comic Natalie
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