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Sazae-san Anime Marks 50th Anniversary With Sequel Stage Play Set 10 Years Later
posted on by Egan Loo
The official website for the television anime of Machiko Hasegawa's Sazae-san manga announced on Tuesday that a stage play will open in Tokyo on September 3. The stage play is part of the anime's 50th anniversary celebration, and the play's story is set a decade after the anime's story.
Norika Fujiwara will play the titular housewife character, and Ryūji Harada will play her husband Masuo. Keiko Takahashi will play Sazae's mother Fune, and Ken Matsudaira will play Sazae's father Namihei. Takahiro Tamura is directing and writing the stage play.
The play will first run at Tokyo's Meiji-za theater from September 3 to September 17, and then it will move to Fukuoka's Hakata-za theater from September 28 to October 13.
In 2017, Cup Noodle's animated "Hungry Days" advertising campaign imagined how Sazae and her future husband Masuo Fuguta met in high school.
Special anime and collaborations with popular television programs are also slated for this fall. In addition, the website announced that the tentatively titled "Sazae-san-ten" exhibition will mark the anime's 50th anniversary. The exhibition developed in cooperation with Fuji TV will debut in Tokyo this summer and run in various locations throughout Japan.
Fuji TV will air a one-hour New Year's special for the Sazae-san anime series on January 6 at 6:00 p.m. The 50th anniversary special will air four mini episodes titled "Isono-ke no Kaiun Ryokō: Chichibu wo Iku" (A Trip of Better Fortune for the Isono Family: Going to Chichibu), "Otoshidama wa Tsurai yo" (New Years Gifts are Painful), "Mikan Kobanashi" (A Short Story about Mikan Oranges), and "Eiga no Okazu-tachi" (The Movie of Okazu and Friends).
The anime adaptation of Machiko Hasegawa's family life manga Sazae-san began airing in October 1969. The anime is usually the highest ranked animated series in Japan each week. In 2013, the show was awarded the Guinness World Record for longest-running animated television series.
Sources: Sazae-san anime's official website, Sazae-san stage play's website, Comic Natalie
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