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Live-Action Library Wars Film Gets Sequel Next October
posted on by Egan Loo
The live-action film of Hiro Arikawa's Toshokan Sensō (Library Wars) action novel series is spawning a sequel, Library Wars: The Last Mission-, which will open next October. The film's star, V6 idol group member Junichi Okada (Tales from Earthsea, From Up On Poppy Hill), said that it will be fun to be able to enter the world of Library Wars again. Co-star Nana Eikura (Mei-chan no Shitsuji, Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru, pictured below) said that, one and a half years after shooting the first film, she feels like it is about time.
The sequel's story is also set one and half years after the story of the first film, in a world where the "Media Improvement Law" regulates all forms of media. There is a struggle between the Media Improvement Committee which strictly and brutally censors with military force, and the Library Defense Force that opposes censorship to protect the freedoms of press and expression.
The story centers on Atsushi (Okada) — an elite soldier with brawn and stoic judgment in the task force of the Kantō Library Defense Force — and Iku (Eikura), the task force's only female member. She enlisted after admiring a member who rescued her when she was in high school.
The other cast members from the first film are reprising their roles: Kei Tanaka as Mikihisa Komaki, Sōta Fukushi as Hikaru Tezuka, Chiaki Kuriyama as Asako Shibasaki, Kōji Ishizaka as Gen Nishina, Naomi Nishida as Maki Origuchi, and Jun Hashimoto as Ryūsuke Genda. Eikura notes that she did not have many action scenes in the first film, but she will have more in the sequel. Fukushi teased that the sequel will develop Tezuka's love life.
Director Shinsuke Satō (Gantz, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, The Princess Blade, Sand Chronicles) is returning to begin shooting the sequel in mid-December.
The first film opened in Japan in April 2013. It screened at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival, in San Francisco at the J-Pop Summit Festival, and in Los Angeles at the L.A. EigaFest.
The novel series already inspired two manga series (one in the shōjo magazine LaLa, and another in the male-oriented Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh), a television anime series, and an anime film Toshokan Sensō: Kakumei no Tsubasa (Library War: The Wings of Revolution) in 2011.
Source: Cinema Today via Hachima Kikō
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