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Nobunaga Concerto Manga Gets TV Anime, Live-Action Show & Film

The June issue of Gessan (Monthly Shonen Sunday) magazine is announcing on Monday that Ayumi Ishii's historical manga Nobunaga Concerto is inspiring a television anime, a live-action television series, and a live-action film. Yūki Kaji will voice Oda Nobunaga in the anime starting this July, while Shun Oguri (Lupin III, Captain Harlock, Detective Conan, Hana Yori Dango, Space Brothers) will play the warlord in the October live-action series and then the film.

The story centers around Saburō, a high school boy who time-travels to Japan's Sengoku Era. He must become Oda Nobunaga, the famed warlord who helps unite Japan.

The television anime will premiere on Fuji TV this July. The other cast members include:

• Mamoru Miyano as Saburō
• Nana Mizuki as Nōhime
• Yūichi Nakamura as Kinoshita Tōkichirō
• Aoi Yūki as Oichi
• Kazuyuki Okitsu as Ikeda Tsuneoki
• Rikiya Koyama as Shigeta Katsuie
• Shintarō Asanuma as Maeda Toshiie
• Kenta Miyake as Sassa Narimasa
• Shinya Takahashi as Niwa Nagahide
• Keiichi Ogata as Takugen
• Jun Fukuyama as Tokugawa Ieyasu
• Takahiro Sakurai as Takenaka Hanbei
• Ryōhei Kimura as Asai Nagamasa
• Ryou Sugizaki as Mori Yoshinari
• Hiroyuki Yoshino as Mori Nagayoshi
• Ayumu Murase as Mori Ranmaru
• Tomokazu Sugita as Ashikaga Yoshiaki
• Takaya Kuroda as Matsunaga Hisahide
• Kōki Uchiyama as Oda Nobuyuki
• Motomu Kiyokawa as Hirate Masahide
• Yousuke Akimoto as Saitō Dōsan

(Historical Japanese names are listed family name first, while modern names are listed family name last.)

Yūsuke Fujikawa is directing the anime off scripts written by Natsuko Takahashi (Antique Bakery, Uragiri wa Boku no Namae o Shitteiru, Moyashimon), and Masaru Yokoyama (Arakawa Under the Bridge, Nobunaga The Fool, Joshiraku) is scoring the music.

Oguri is not only playing Oda Nobunaga in the live-action versions, but also his modern counterpart Saburō.

Ishii launched the manga in the inaugural issue of Gessan in 2009, and Shogakukan is publishing the 10th compiled volume on Monday. The manga ranked #10 in the Male Readers category of the "Kono Manga ga Sugoi!" list by Takarajimasha Inc. in 2012. The manga was nominated for the fifth Manga Taisho awards in 2012, and it won the Boys' Category of the 57th Shogakukan Manga Awards later that year.

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