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Eleven Arts Licenses Blue Thermal Anime Film

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Eleven Arts announced during its panel at Anime NYC on Saturday that it has licensed the anime film of Kana Ozawa's Blue Thermal -Aonagi Daigaku Taiiku-kai Kōkū-bu- (Aonagi College Sports Festival Aviation Club) manga. The film will have its North American premiere at the Anime Frontier event in Fort Worth, Texas in December.

Eleven Arts describes the film:

"I want to experience a love that sparkles!" Arriving from Nagasaki with her wishful mantra is Tamaki Tsuru, who in high school could think only about volleyball. Things don't begin well, however, when she looks for an extracurricular club to join and proceeds to immediately ding a glider at aviation club tryouts ending up having to work it off. She is initially disillusioned with campus life. Then Kuramochi, the club leader and glider pilot, takes Tamaki under his wing, and from the moment he takes her up for a flight in a glider, Tamaki becomes a captive of the vast beauty of the skies.

The film opened in Japan on March 4.

The film stars:

• Mayu Hotta as Tamaki Tsuru
• Nobunaga Shimazaki as Jun Kuramochi
• Junya Enoki as Daisuke Sorachi
• Mikako Komatsu as Chizuru Yano
• Daisuke Ono as Yō Asahina
• Haruka Shiraishi as Yukari Muroi
• Yō Taichi as Ayako Maki
• Ayumu Murase as Eita Narihara
• Makoto Furukawa as Ryōhei Nanba
• Rie Takahashi as Kaori Mochida
• Taku Yashiro as Harukaze Aihara
• Kengo Kawanishi as Kaede Hatori
• Minori Terada as Aonagi's director

Masaki Tachibana (Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Barakamon, Princess Principal) directed the film at Telecom Animation Film, and also penned the script alongside Natsuko Takahashi (Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, My Love Story!!, Farewell, My Dear Cramer). Toei distributes the film.

Four-member piano rock band SHE'S performed the film's titular theme song "Blue Thermal," and they also contributed the insert song "Beautiful Bird" for the film.

The manga ran in Shinchosha's Monthly Comic @Bunch magazine from April 2014 to November 2017, and Shichosha published five compiled book volumes for the manga (the manga's fifth volume mentions that only the "first part" of the story has concluded). Ozawa launched a prequel manga titled Blue Thermal: First Flight on the LINE Manga app in November 2021, and ended it in January. Shinchosha published the manga's one compiled book volume on February 9.

Source: Press release