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Waiting for Spring Shōjo Manga Gets Live-Action Film in Winter

A live-action film adaptation of Anashin's Waiting for Spring (Harumatsu Bokura) manga has been green-lit for this winter.

Tao Tsuchiya (top row center in image above) will play the lead role of Mitsuki Haruno. Yūta Koseki (top row left) will play Mitsuki's childhood friend Aya Kamiyama. Takumi Kitamura (top row right), Yū Inaba (bottom row left), Hayato Isomura (bottom row center), and Yōsuke Sugino (bottom row right) will play the basketball team's "four kings" Towa Asakura, Rui Miyamoto, Kyōsuke Wakamiya, and Ryūji Tada.

Yūichirō Hirakawa (live-action Erased, Rookies the Movie: Graduation) is directing the film, and Satoko Okazaki (Tiger & Bunny, Yanyan Machiko) is writing the screenplay. Office Crescendo is producing the film, and Warner Brothers Japan is distributing.

Kodansha Comics is publishing the manga in English, and it describes the story:

Mizuki (sic) is a shy girl who's about to enter high school, and vows to open herself up to new friendships. Of course, the four stars of the boys' basketball team weren't exactly the friends she had in mind! Yet, when they drop by the café where she works, the five quickly hit it off. Soon she's been accidentally thrust into the spotlight, targeted by jealous girls. And will she expand her mission to include…love?

Anashin launched Waiting for Spring in Kodansha's Dessert magazine in 2014. Kodansha published the manga's eighth compiled book volume last October, and will publish the ninth volume on March 13. Kodansha Comics published the fourth volume in English on January 16. The manga was nominated in Kodansha's 41st Manga Awards last year, and the American Library Association's (ALA's) Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) listed the manga in its 2018 list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens.

Sources: Comic Natalie, Oricon News via Otakomu