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Shion Miura's The Great Passage Novel Gets Live-Action Show in February
posted on by Joanna Cayanan
NHK announced the live-action series adaptation of Shion Miura's Fune o Amu (The Great Passage) novel series, titled Fune o Amu ~Watashi, Jisho Tsukurimasu~ (The Great Passage ~I Will Make a Dictionary~) on Tuesday. The series will air on the NHK BS and BS Premium 4K channels on February 18 at 10:49 p.m. JST.
The 10-episode series stars Yōjirō Noda (right in image above) as the protagonist Mitsuya Majime, who was recruited to a publishing company's dictionary editorial department due to his love of words and reading, and Elaiza Ikeda (left in image above) as Midori Kishibe, who was transferred from a fashion magazine's editorial department to the dictionary editorial department. Renpei Tsukamoto and Manabu Asou are directing the series. Naomi Hiruta is writing the script, and Face 2 fAKE is composing the music.
The story follows the employees at the Genbu Shobō publishing company. Araki, who is a veteran editor for the dictionary department, is looking for a successor now that he's approaching retirement age. After Majime Mitsuya — a salesman who's a poor talker — meets Masashi Nishioka — Araki's coworker who is sociable and frivolous — Araki overhears their conversation and decides to recruit Majime into the department. The story follows "the awkward humans" Majime and Masashi as they work together to compile a medium-sized Japanese dictionary titled "The Great Passage" (Daitokai).
Haruko Kumota (Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju) launched the novel's manga adaptation in Kodansha's ITAN magazine in June 2016. Kodansha published the manga's first compiled book volume in July 2017, and the second and final volume in November 2017.
An anime adaptation that used Kumota's original character designs premiered on the Fuji TV network's Noitamina timeslot in October 2016. Amazon Prime's now defunct Anime Strike paid streaming service streamed the anime in the United States.
Sources: NHK, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
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