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Live-Action Parasyte Film Gets Comedy Spinoff Shorts
posted on by Emma Hanashiro
The official website for the live-action Parasyte film announced on Friday that spinoff shorts made in collaboration with NTV's news program ZIP!, will air from November 10 to 28. The 15-episode series, titled "Migi no Sekai o Oshiete" (Teach Me Migi's World), will focus on Migi's everyday life as Shinichi Izumi's right arm and comically portray how Migi's studies humans. Live-action cast members Shōta Sometani (Shinichi Izumi), Ai Hashimoto (Satomi Murano), and Sadao Abe (the voice of Migi) will also play their respective characters in the shorts.
The first of two live-action Parasyte films by director Takashi Yamazaki (live-action Space Battleship Yamato, Always: Sunset on Third Street) is slated to open on November 29, 2014, one day after the shorts end. The second film is slated for April 25, 2015. These films adapt Hitoshi Iwaaki's original manga serialized in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine from 1990-1995. The 10-volume series (later reprinted in an eight-volume version) has more than 11 million copies in print.
The manga takes place in a world where alien beings called Parasites come to Earth and start taking over humans by entering in through their noses and ears and attaching themselves to their brains. One alien called Migi is only able to take over high school student Shinichi Izumi's right arm, and is unable to control Shinichi completely. Migi and Shinichi learn to co-exist, and the two battle other Parasites who see humans only as food.
Mixxine, the company that eventually became Tokyopop, published Parasyte in its Mixxine magazine and later in compiled book volumes. Del Rey then republished the series from 2007-2009, and Kodansha Comics republished the manga again from 2011-2012.
The manga also received a television anime adaptation which premiered on NTV in October. Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs in Japan.
Source: Cinema Today via Hachima Kikō
