News
Tohru Fujisawa's Soul Reviver Manga Gets Live-Action Japanese-Korean Show
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Hero's Inc. announced on Tuesday that Tohru Fujisawa and Manabu Akishige's Soul Reviver manga is inspiring an upcoming joint Japanese-South Korean live-action show. The show will debut in over-the-top streaming services in South Korea.
Japanese production company Robot and South Korean production company B.A. Entertainment are co-producing the show, through a partnership facilitated by the Visual Industry Promotion Organization since October of last year.
In the original manga, the dead can be brought back to life, if their souls can be restored before disappearing into the void. Between death and the void is the world of the dead, and two individuals — the former detective Ryūsuke Jin and the dead high school girl Clara Sekimachi — salvage souls in this realm.
Fujisawa created the scenario and original character designs, while Akishige drew the manga. The manga launched in Hero's Inc.'s Monthly Hero's magazine in 2011, and ended it in November 2014 with four volumes.
Shogakukan promoted the third volume with a 3D CG short in April 2013, and Kaizō Hayashi (Maiku Hama films, creative director for 7 Blades game) directed a nine-minute live-action short based on the manga in December 2013. The series also had a Hollywood live-action film adaptation in the works, with Annmarie Sairrino's previous ANEW Entertainment production company no longer moving forward with the film. Sairrino left ANEW following a corporate reorganization in 2017, and the film's production ceased to proceed. Edward Zwick (director, The Last Samurai, Glory, Courage Under Fire) and Marshall Herskovitz (producer, The Last Samurai, Traffic, I Am Sam) were once attached to the film via Herskovitz's The Bedford Falls Compan.
Fujisawa (GTO) began the Soul Reviver South series as the manga's "second season" in Monthly Hero's in December 2014, one month after the original manga ended. The second series ended in February 2016 with three volumes.
Update: Added correction regarding current status and production company of Soul Reviver's Hollywood live-acton film project.
Source: Comic Natalie
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history