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Sakura Wars: Kanadegumi Shōjo Manga Gets Stage Play

This year's 18th issue of Hakusensha's shōjo magazine Hana to Yume is announcing on Monday that Chie Shimada's Sakura Taisen: Kanadegumi (Sakura Wars: Performing Division) manga is being adapted into a stage play this November. It also confirms that the manga is being adapted into a short anime promotional video. In the same issue, Miyuki Mitsubachi launches her manga version of Jupiter, the male idol group from Namco Bandai Games' Idolm@ster franchise.

Sakura Taisen: Kanadegumi follows a girl named Neko Miyabi and her interactions with five attractive young men. The story takes place in Tokyo and centers on an imperial opera company named Kanadegumi. The manga launched in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume shōjo magazine last November as a two-chapter manga, but then became a regular series this past February.

Since its debut over 15 years ago, Sakura Wars has been a dating simulation/tactical role-playing game franchise aimed primarily at male gamers. The previous entries in the franchise followed the alternate-history adventures of several all-female mechanized task forces — that also perform musicals to maintain their top secret cover. The games' voice actresses reprised their roles in real-life stage musicals that lasted long after the main game series ended.

NIS America, a subsidiary of the game company Nippon Ichi Software, adapted the Sakura Taisen V ~Saraba, Itoshiki Hito yo~ game as Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, the first Sakura Wars game to be released in North America. There have also been many anime and manga adaptations over the years.

Source: 4Gamer via Hachima Kikō