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Hakuōki's High School Spinoff Gets Live-Action Show, Stage Play

Hakuōki SSL ~sweet school life~, the popular high school spinoff of the Hakuōki game franchise, is itself inspiring a live-action television project and a stage play. According to the Saturday announcement, the television project will debut this fall, and the stage play will open this winter. The two projects will have the same cast.

Idea Factory launched the original Hakuōki romance adventure game on the PlayStation 2 console in 2008. The first game centered around the player character Chizuru Yukimura and members of the legendary Shinsengumi police force in the Bakumatsu era, the end of the shoguns' rule over Japan. The franchise has since expanded to the PSP, Nintendo DS, and smartphones. The games also inspired three television anime, an original video anime project, two anime films, stage plays, and stage musicals.

Unlike the other games in the franchise, Hakuōki SSL ~sweet school life~ is set in an academy in the present day, and the characters are now high school students and teachers. Also unlike the other games, this spinoff has no scenes of bloodshed.

The spinoff originally debuted as a bonus when a player collected certain items in the Hakuōki: Zuisōroku fan disc in 2009. This bonus scenario proved so popular that it became a standalone game for the PS Vita in March 2014.

The cast for both the television and stage play project includes:

Kensaku Miyashita is directing the stage play, and is also co-writing it with Shintarō Sugano.

Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime franchise in 2013. Otomate, Idea Factory's brand aimed at female players, released the Hakuōki Shinsengumi Kitan game for PlayStation 3 in Japan in 2010, and the game debuted in North America last year.

Source: animeanime.jp