J-Novel Club Announces the Licensing of From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “Anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart”

Mari Okada's autobiography tells the story of her troubled childhood and how it shaped her as a writer

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS – March 30th, 2018 – J-Novel Club LLC is proud to announce the acquisition of From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart” by Mari Okada, by arrangement of Bungeishunju Ltd. A free preview is available now on j-novel.club, and the e-book will go on sale in early May.

Published in Japan in 2017, From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart” is the autobiography of Mari Okada, one of the anime industry's most prolific and well known screenwriters, having written countless episodes in her early career, and then moving on to pen original anime like anohana and The Anthem of the Heart to great acclaim. This very personal story is a public confession of sorts, about her childhood where she consistently skipped school, about the strained relationship with her mother, and about her moving to Tokyo and becoming a writer. Any fan of the anime she has written, or those looking for a rare glimpse into the personal story of someone working in the industry, will find this book really one of its kind.

About the Author:

Born in Chichibu, 1976, Mari Okada became a truant toward the end of elementary school and shut herself in her room. Even after getting into high school, she still couldn't push herself to attend school. By exchanging essays with her teacher, she somehow managed to graduate from high school and enter a vocational school for computer games in Tokyo. It was there that she first started writing scripts, and in 1997 she made her debut as a screenwriter for direct-to- video films. She later wrote a pitch for an anime set in Chichibu, the town of her confinement. This series, titled anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, was officially made into an anime and aired on Fuji Television in 2011. After anohana became a hit, Okada then went on to write The Anthem of the Heart in 2015, which was also set in the same “pilgrimage spot” of Chichibu.

About J-Novel Club

J-Novel Club Membership is only $4.50 a month for an annual membership, and gives you a new chapter a week from all 14 of our ongoing series, including “The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar”, “[New Life+]”, “Clockwork Planet”, “Invaders of the Rokujouma!?”, “If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord”, “Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest”, “Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash”, “The Faraway Paladin”, “In Another World With My Smartphone”, “Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension”, “How a Realistic Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom”, and “I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse” and many more!

Announced Title List:

From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart” by Mari Okada, Illustrations by Masayoshi Tanaka
学校へ行けなかった私が「あの花」「ここさけ」を書くまで
Worldwide English Digital Rights

From the writer of “anohana: The Flower We Saw Saw That Day” and “The Anthem of the Heart” comes the next expressive tale of the fight against one's own demons.

Mari Okada grew up in rural Chichibu, a truant for most of her adolescent life. She observed school life from afar, often refusing to leave the confines of her room. But with the fateful encounter of a visiting school teacher, Okada was able to find her way through the echelons of school using her untapped skill of turning words on a page into a unique voice that truly captured the essence of one's own youthful spirit.

From her own personal desires to leave home and find a place in “the world outside”, Okada came face-to- face with her own anxiety and let her stories speak out on her behalf of her struggles to truly find peace with the world around her.

“From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to ‘anohana’ and 'The Anthem of the Heart'” is a gripping autobiography that details the not-so- successful life of one of anime's biggest screenwriters as she faces the hardest challenge of all: finding herself through her own works.