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Live-Action Blade of the Immortal Cinemas Website Launched
posted on by Andrew Osmond
A website has been launched giving venues and booking links for the UK cinema release on Takashi Miike's live-action version film of Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal "neo period drama" manga. The film opens on December 1.
The manga follows Manji's journey of revenge as the yōjinbō (bodyguard) of Rin, a young woman who swears vengeance against a group of sword fighters who murdered her parents.
The film's lead actors include Takuya Kimura (seen above) and Hana Sugisaki (seen right). Kimura (Howl's Moving Castle, Redline, live-action Space Battleship Yamato) plays the lead character Manji, a rōnin warrior cursed with an immortal body. Sugisaki (When Marnie Was There, live-action Humanoid Monster Bem, Tsukuroi Tatsu Hito) plays heroine Rin Asano.
Prolific filmmaker Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Yatterman, As the Gods Will, Crows) is directing the film. Filming took place in Kyoto in extremely cold weather, and the climax of Manji and Rin versus 300 enemies took about 15 days to shoot. The film opened in Japan on April 29.
Samura launched the Blade of the Immortal manga in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine in December of 1993, and he completed the series in 2012. The manga's 30 volumes have 5 million copies in print, and the series has been published in 22 countries and territories. The manga earned an Excellence Prize in the manga category of the 1st Japan Media Arts Festival Awards in 1997, and it won the Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material in 2000. The manga is getting a reprint in Japan with new covers.
Via Otaku News
