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Naoki Urasawa's Pluto Manga Inspires 2nd Stage Play With Performances in U.K., Netherlands, Belgium
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
A second stage play adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto manga has been green-lit. The play will run at the Bunkamura Theater Cocoon in Tokyo from January 7, 2018 to January 28, 2018. It will then have an international run in February 2018 in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Belgium, before returning to Japan in Osaka's Morinomiya Piloti Hall in late March 2018.
The cast includes (clockwise from upper left):
- Shunsuke Daito as Gesicht
- Mirai Moriyama as Atom, returning from the 2015 stage play
- Tao Tsuchiya as Uran/Helena
- Mitsuru Fukikoshi as Abullah
- Akira Emoto as Dr. Tenma, returning from the 2015 stage play
- Kazutoyo Yoshimi as Dr. Ochanomizu, returning from the 2015 stage play
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is directing and choreographing the play. Other cast members include Kazuomi Kōzuki, Shintarō Ōue, Masaru Ikejima, Daisuke Ōmiya, Nobuhiro Shibuya, AYUMI, Ema Yuasa, Jun Morii, and Ryōji Sasamoto. The rest of the cast members are new. The play will be Tsuchiya's debut stage play.
The Pluto manga is Urasawa and producer Takashi Nagasaki's seinen drama re-imagining of the world depicted in Osamu Tezuka's manga Astro Boy. The series ran in Shogakukan's Big Comic Original magazine from 2003 to 2009, and its eight compiled book volumes have sold more than 8.5 million copies. The manga has been translated and published in 20 countries including France and the United States. Viz Media, which released the manga in North America, describes the story:
In a distant future where sentient humanoid robots pass for human, someone or something is out to destroy the seven great robots of the world. Europol's top detective Gesicht is assigned to investigate these mysterious robot serial murders - the only catch is that he himself is one of the seven targets.
An anime adaptation of the manga is in the works. Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment acquired the film rights from Tezuka Productions for a planned live-action/computer-graphics (CG) hybrid film of Pluto in 2010.
Source: Comic Natalie
