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Angela Aki Composes In This Corner of the World Stage Musical

The official website for the stage musical of Fumiyo Kouno's In This Corner of the World manga announced on Wednesday that Angela Aki is composing the music for the musical.

Aki's work on the musical will mark her formal return to working in Japan, after she went on an indefinite hiatus in 2014 to pursue studying music in the United States. She will release "Kono Sekai no Achikochi ni" (In Various Corners of the World). a new single which she composed specifically for the musical, on February 7, 2024.

Aki performed the theme song for Final Fantasy XII and has also performed theme songs for Space Brothers and Blood+.

The In This Corner of the World stage musical will open at the Nissay Theatre in Tokyo next May. The production will then go on a nationwide tour from June to July, with stops at Hokkaido, Iwate, Niigata, Aichi, Nagano, Ibaraki, and Osaka, before closing its run at Hiroshima's Kure City — the real-life locale of the story.

Natsumi Kon (theme songs for Chaos Dragon, Majestic Prince, One Week Friends) and Sakurako Ōhara (live-action Kanojo wa Uso o Ai Shisugiteru, Natsuzora) share the lead role of Suzu. Likewise, Naoto Kaihō (The Lion King, Les Misérables) and Ryota Murai (Fūma no Kojirō, Kamen Rider Decade) both play Shūsaku Hōjō, Suzu's betrothed. Aya Hirano (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Death Note) and former Nogizaka46 group member Reika Sakurai play Rin Shiraki, the third part of the love triangle with Suzu and Shūsaku. Kei Otozuki (Takarazuka's Roméo et Juliette, JIN) plays Shūsaku's big sister Keiko Kuromura.

Ikkō Ueda (Your Lie in April stage musical) is writing and directing the new production.

JManga and Seven Seas Entertainment have both released the manga in English, and Seven Seas Entertainment describes the story:

1940's Hiroshima Prefecture. Suzu, a young woman from the countryside, joins her new husband and his family in the shipbuilding city of Kure. As her beautiful home collapses around her, Suzu must confront the challenges of a new life while coming to grips with a world in turmoil. Unwilling to give up hope, Suzu struggles against the horrors of war to create her own happiness.

Kouno serialized the manga in Weekly Manga Action from 2007 to 2009, and Futabasha published three compiled book volumes for the manga. Seven Seas Entertainment published the manga in October 2017.

The manga already inspired Sunao Katabuchi's 2016 anime film, which won awards from the Tokyo Anime Award Festival and Japan Media Arts Festival. Katabuchi expanded the film with a 2019 edition titled In This Corner (and Other Corners) of the World. The manga also inspired a 2011 live-action television special starring Keiko Kitagawa and a 2018 live-action television series.

Sources: In This Corner of the World stage musical's website, Comic Natalie