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Io Sakisaka's Ao Haru Ride/Blue Spring Ride Manga Gets Live-Action Show

WOWOW announced on Friday that it is producing a live-action television series adaptation of Io Sakisaka's Blue Spring Ride (Ao Haru Ride) manga that will premiere on the channel this fall. The series will have a season 1 of eight episodes, followed by a season 2 later.

Natsuki Deguchi (left in image above, Silent Parade, The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House) stars as Futaba Yoshioka, while Kaito Sakurai (right, live-action Kimi ni Todoke, Usogui) stars as Kō Mabuchi.

Masato Kimura is directing all of the show's episodes except the fifth and seventh episodes, which Yūsuke Matsuda will direct.

The story revolves around Futaba, a girl who was in love with a boy named Kō Tanaka in middle school. However, after a misunderstanding, their relationship as friends ends when he transfers schools over summer vacation. In high school, her world is turned around once more when she meets Kō again, this time under the name of Kō Mabuchi. Both have undergone great changes in personality in their time away from each other, with Futaba abandoning her once girly personality for the sake of fitting in with her classmates, and Kō's turbulent family life turning him cynical and sarcastic.

Sakisaka launched the manga in Shueisha's Bessatsu Margaret magazine in 2011, and ended it in February 2015. Shueisha published 13 compiled book volumes for the series. Viz Media released the manga in English.

Production I.G adapted the manga into a 13-episode television anime series that aired in Japan from July to September 2014. The manga also received a live-action film adaptation, which opened in Japan in December 2014, topping the box office in its opening weekend with a 241 million yen (US$2.05 million) gross.

Sources: WOWOW, Comic Natalie