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Solitary Gourmet Live-Action Show Gets 7th Consecutive New Year's Special
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
TV Tokyo announced on Wednesday that the live-action series adaptation of Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi's Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga will have its seventh consecutive New Year's special titled "Kodoku no Gourmet 2023 Ōmisoka Special Inagashira Gorō, Minami e Tōhikō 'Sagasanaide Kudasai.'" (Solitary Gourmet 2023 New Year's Eve Special: Gorō Inagashira Flees to the South 'Please Don't Look for Me') on December 31 at 10:00 p.m. JST.
Yutaka Matsushige (live-action Death Note, Sukiyaki Western Django, Crows Zero) will once again reprise his role as protagonist Gorō Inagashira. This year's New Year's Eve special will feature Gorō's forced vacation to Okinawa.
The special's guest cast includes Akinaga Toyomoto as producer Shōta Nagano, Ryōko Kuninaka as Okinawa folk music group Tēgēs leader Reina Tamaki, and Jiei Kabira as Tēgēs member and driver Saburō Shimabukuro.
Both the Kodoku no Gourmet live-action series and original manga follow a solitary salesman named Gorō Inagashira as he travels all over Japan and samples the local cuisine found on street corners. The live-action show's 10th season premiered in October 2022.
The franchise also had a six-episode live-action mini-series project titled Kodoku no Gourmet ~Oishii kedo Horo Nigai... Inagashira Gorō no Sainan~ (Solitary Gourmet ~It's Tasty But Slightly Bitter... Gorō Inagashira's Misfortune~) that debuted on the Paravi and Hikari TV streaming services in March to April 2022.
Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi first serialized the Kodoku no Gourmet manga from 1994 to 1996 in Fusosha's Monthly Panja magazine (now defunct). Kusumi handled the story, and Taniguchi drew the art. Fusosha published the first collected volume in 1997. Kusumi and Fusosha published the manga's second volume in September 2015. Taniguchi passed away in February 2017.
Fanfare and Ponent Mon will release the manga in English. The company had said the manga will "most likely" debut in spring 2021, but the series is now listed as debuting in July 2023.
The manga also inspired a net anime that debuted on Production I.G's "Tate Anime" (Vertical Anime) smartphone app in November 2017.
Source: Comic Natalie
