News
College Life Manga Aoi Honō Gets Live-Action Show
posted on by Egan Loo
A live-action television series adaptation of Kazuhiko Shimamoto's college life manga Aoi Honō will premiere in the Drama 24 programming block on TV Tokyo and its affiliates this July.
The coming-of-age drama is based on Shimamoto's own college years in the 1980s. Real-life creators like Gainax founders Hideaki Anno (Evangelion) and Hiroyuki Yamaga (Royal Space Force - Wings of Honneamise) have appeared in the manga, since Shimamoto actually went to school with them.
Yuuya Yagira (Nobody Knows, Genius Party's Baby Blue, Kunimitsu no Matsuri, pictured right) will star in his first over-the-air television series when he plays the title role of Moyuru Honō. Honō is a first-year student in a certain major university of the fine arts in Osaka. Full of passion and ambition, he vows to become a manga creator.
Yūichi Fukuda (HK/Hentai Kamen, One Pound Gospel, Saru Lock, I'll Give It My All... Tomorrow, Yūsha Yoshihiko franchise, The 3-Mei-sama: Anime wa Anime de Arissho!) is directing and writing the scripts. Fukuda (pictured left in photo to the left) has been longtime good friends with Shimamoto (pictured right), and he eagerly said that only he can realize Shimamoto's works onscreen.
The original manga first ran in Shogakukan's Weekly Young Sunday magazine from 2007 until the magazine's closure in 2008. It then ran in the spinoff publication Spirits Zokan YS Special before moving to its new home, Gessan (Monthly Shonen Sunday). Shogakukan published the 11th compiled volume in December. The Japanese government's Ministry of Cultural Affairs named the manga one of the Jury Recommended Works in the Story Manga division in the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards in 2009. The manga was also nominated for the third Manga Taisho awards in the following year.
Shimamoto's other manga include Choukyuu! Kidō Butōden G Gundam, Hoero Pen, Honō no Tenkōsei, Moeyo Pen, and The Skull Man. Honō no Tenkōsei (Blazing Transfer Student) inspired an original video anime.
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Source: Comic Natalie
Images © Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Shogakukan/Aoi Honō Production Committee
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