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Ai no Kotodama BL Manga Gets 2nd Live-Action Film
posted on by Egan Loo
Keiko Konno's Ai no Kotodama boys-love manga has inspired a second live-action film, Ai no Kotodama ~Sekai no Hate Made~ (Words of Devotion: To the End of the World), which will open in Japan on August 7. Satoshi Kaneda directed the second Ai no Kotodama film as he did for the first.
Like the original manga, the first Ai no Kotodama film (2007) centered on the relationship between partners Ohtani (live-action GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka's Hidenori Tokuyama) and Tachibana (live-action The Prince of Tennis' Yasuka Saitou) after high school. Saitou reprises his Tachibana role in the second film, but there are two new main characters who work at an advertising agency: an IT worker named Hirofumi (Makoto Ueunobori) and a high-level employee named Shinji (Ryūnosuke Kawai). Both Ueunobori and Kawai have appeared in the live-action stage musical version of The Prince of Tennis manga, and the Hirofumi character is Ueunobori's first starring role in a film.
Digital Manga Publishing's Juné imprint released the two volumes of the Ai no Kotodama manga under the title Words of Devotion in North America in 2007. Last month, the Japanese publisher Frontier Works announced that Kaneda will direct still another live-action film version of a boys-love manga — Hyouta Fujiyama's Pure Heart (Junjō).
Source: Cinema Today
Image © 2010 Keiko Konno/Frontier Works/Ai no Kotodama ~Sekai no Hate Made~ Partners
