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Solitary Gourmet Live-Action Series Gets 9th Season

TV Tokyo revealed on Monday that the live-action series adaptation of Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi's Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga will have a ninth season that will premiere in July. Yutaka Matsushige (live-action Death Note, Sukiyaki Western Django, Crows Zero) will once again reprise his role as protagonist Gorō Inagashira.

The new season will focus on small, family-run restaurants, revisiting some previous restaurants shown in other seasons. It will also refocus on the series' overall "solitary dining" theme, in light of the difficulties of dining out during the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

Both the Kodoku no Gourmet live-action series and original manga follow a solitary salesman named Gorō Inagashira as he travels all over Japan and samples the local cuisine found on street corners. The live-action show's eighth season premiered in October 2019.

Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi first serialized the Kodoku no Gourmet manga from 1994 to 1996 in Fusosha's Monthly Panja magazine (now defunct). Kusumi handled the story, and Taniguchi drew the art. Fusosha published the first collected volume in 1997. Kusumi and Fusosha published the manga's second volume in September 2015. Taniguchi passed away in February 2017.

Fanfare and Ponent Mon will release the manga in English. The company had said the manga will "most likely" debut in spring 2021, but the series is currently listed as being "further down the line" on its website.

The manga also inspired a net anime that debuted on Production I.G's "Tate Anime" (Vertical Anime) smartphone app in November 2017.

Sources: Kodoku no Gourmet live-action series' website, Comic Natalie