News
Funimation Listed as Distributor for Live-Action Parasyte, As The Gods Will Films
posted on by Jordain Haley-Banez
Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival is listing Funimation as the distributor for both live-action Parasyte films and the live-action As the Gods Will film. All three films screened at the Canadian festival in mid-July. Funimation did not respond to ANN's request for confirmation as of press time.
The first Parasyte movie premiered in November 2014 in Japan, and the sequel in April 2015. Shōta Sometani (live-action xxxHOLiC, All Esper Dayo!) stars in the films as Shinichi Izumi, Eri Fukatsu (Onnanoko Monogatari) plays Ryōko Tamiya, and Ai Hashimoto (Blood-C: The Last Dark, live-action Another, Sadako 3D) plays Satomi Murano.
These films adapt Hitoshi Iwaaki's original manga serialized in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine from 1990-1995. The 10-volume series (later reprinted in an eight-volume version) has more than 11 million copies in print.
The manga takes place in a world where alien beings called Parasites come to Earth and start taking over humans by entering in through their noses and ears and attaching themselves to their brains. One alien called Migi is only able to take over high school student Shinichi Izumi's right arm, and is unable to control Shinichi completely. Migi and Shinichi learn to co-exist, and the two battle other Parasites who see humans only as food.
The live-action As the Gods Will (Kami-sama no Iu Toori) premiered in Japan in November 2014. Takashi Miike (Crows Zero, Ichi the Killer) directed the film, and it stars Sōta Fukushi (live-action Library Wars/Toshokan Sensō) as Shun Takahata, Hirona Yamazaki (Lesson of the Evil, Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu) as Shun's childhood friend Ichika Akimoto, and Ryunosuke Kamiki (Summer Wars, Howl's Moving Castle, Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Taika-hen) as Shun's violence-loving classmate Takeru Amaya.
The story of the original horror-survival manga begins when strange and frightening things start happening at Shun Takahata's high school. After his teacher is killed, he and his classmates must play horrifying games in order to avoid death.
Muneyuki Kaneshiro wrote the story while Akeji Fujimura drew the artwork for the Kami-sama no Iu Toori manga's first arc in Kodansha's monthly Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from 2011 to 2012. The manga resumed with a second arc, As the Gods Will: The Second Series, in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2013, and is currently running. Crunchyroll offers As the Gods Will: The Second Series in English online, and Kodansha Comics also publishes the manga digitally.
Thanks to Poi Lee for the news tip.
