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Umimachi Diary/Our Little Sister Manga Gets Stage Play

This year's March issue of Shogakukan's Monthly Flowers magazine announced on Saturday that Akimi Yoshida's Umimachi Diary manga will get a stage play adaptation. The play will run at Tokyo's New National Theatre from March 31 through April 2.

Toshiyuki Morioka is directing the play and writing the script. The cast includes: Mami Yamasaki, Yurina Yanagi, Ari Kadomae, Manaka Kinoshita, Sasa Handa, Yuki Tsumuraya, Yūki Nakahara, Riyo Morioka, Maika Nakajima, Takae Niyama, Miku Togashi, Saki Shiraishi, Ryō Tani, Masahiro Ishida, Takumi Noi, Aki Morita, Hitoshi Satō, Akiyoshi Shibata, Kazuhiro Nakahara, and others.

Rock band Risky Melody and Les.R's Yuka are listed as bands for the stage play.

The story takes place in Kamakura, and revolves around Yoshino, the middle of three sisters. One morning, after she wakes up in a man's room, her father's obituary is delivered to her. Yoshino hadn't met her father in a long time, since her mother divorced him. After not seeing him for so long, she doesn't know how to feel at the announcement of his death. Only at her father's funeral do the sisters meet their half-sister whom they had never met.

The Umimachi Diary (Seaside Town Diary) manga began serialization in Monthly Flowers in 2006, and Shogakukan shipped the seventh compiled volume in January 2016. The manga was a nominee for the 11th Cultural Affairs Media, Art, & Manga Award, and it won the 2013 Manga Taisho (Cartoon Grand Prize) award.

The manga inspired a 2015 live-action film by famed director Hirokazu Kore-eda that screened with English subtitles under the title Our Little Sister. The film won five awards, including Best Picture of the Year, at the 37th Annual Japan Academy Prizes in March. Sony Pictures Classics has licensed the film.