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Only Yesterday Manga Gets Live-Action Special After Inspiring Ghibli Film

NHK announced on Monday that it is producing a live-action special based on Hotaru Okamoto and Yūko Tone's Only Yesterday manga that will premiere as early as January 2021 on BS Premium and BS4K. Keiko Matsuzaka is starring as the 64-year-old "Reiwa Taeko," and An is playing her daughter Natsuki Sugimoto.

Keiko Matsuzaka

An

The live-action show's story centers on Taeko Sugimoto, who lives in Tokyo in 2020. Taeko begins living together with her teenage granddaughter and Natsuki, Taeko's daughter in her 30s. "Showa Taeko," Taeko's Showa-era self, supports her as she pursues her new dream of becoming an actress.

Kazutaka Watanabe is directing the special, and Kōichi Yajima is writing the script. The special is scheduled to shoot from early to late September.

Okamoto and Tone's original manga inspired Studio Ghibli and Isao Takahata's Only Yesterday anime film in 1991. GKIDS released the film on home video, and it describes the story:

It's 1982, and Taeko (Daisy Ridley) is 27 years old, unmarried, and has lived her whole life in Tokyo. She decides to visit her family in the countryside, and as the train travels through the night, memories flood back of her younger years: the first immature stirrings of romance, the onset of puberty, and the frustrations of math and boys. At the station she is met by young farmer Toshio (Dev Patel), and the encounters with him begin to reconnect her to forgotten longings. In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko contemplates the arc of her life, and wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self.

GKIDS also screened the anime film in North America in 2016. The company then released the film digitally in December 2019. Netflix began streaming the anime on February 1.

Sources: NHK Drama, Comic Natalie