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Mari Okada's Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarou Anime Film Opens at #5

P.A. Works, Showgate, and Mari Okada's Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarō (Let Us Adorn the Morning of Farewells With Promised Flowers) anime film debuted at #5 at the Japanese box office during the February 24-25 weekend. The film sold 32,000 tickets in 76 theaters to earn 48 million yen (about US$450,240).

The story begins with Maquia, who is from a family where all the members stop aging in their mid teens. She has no parents and, although her days are peaceful, she feels lonely. Their peace is shattered when an army invades, seeking the secret to her people's immortality. Leilia, the most beautiful girl in her clan, is taken away, and the boy Maquia has secret feelings for disappears. Maquia is able to escape, but she loses her friends and her home. Wandering alone in the forest, she finds Erial, a baby boy who has lost his parents. The story follows the changing relationship between the two as Erial grows up and Maquia does not.

The film is the directorial debut of anime screenwriter Okada (The Anthem of the Heart, anohana). She also wrote the film's scripts at P.A. Works.

The live-action film of Yūya Kanzaki and Arata Miyatsuki's Funōhan (Impossibility Defense) manga fell from #4 to #6 in its fourth weekend.

The suspense manga centers on Tadashi Usobuki, a man who wears a black suit and is able to kill others through the power of suggestion and by warping their thoughts. Although Tadashi often appears at the scene of the crime of these unnatural deaths, no one is able to prosecute him because police can never find any proof.

A four-episode mini-series premiered on dTV last December. The cast for both the film and the mini-series includes Tori Matsuzaka (live-action Gatchaman's Ken Washio the Eagle, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger's Takeru Shiba) as Tadashi Usobuki and Erika Sawajiri (live-action Helter Skelter, Shinjuku Swan) as Tomoko Tada.

The live-action film of Tatsuhiko Yamagami and Mikio Igarashi's Hitsuji no Ki (The Sheep's Tree or The Scythian Lamb) manga fell from #5 to #7 in its fourth weekend.

The manga's story is set in a former seaport town that becomes the center of a secret government project. The project involves sending former convicts to live in the town, with almost no one in the town aware that they are former criminals. The story depicts the tension between the former convicts, whose intentions are unknown, and the citizens. Ryo Nishikido stars in the lead role as Hajime Tsukisue, a kind-hearted public servant who is one of the few who know about the government project central to the story.

The Gekijōban Infini-T Force: Gatchaman Saraba Tomo yo film also opened on February 24, but didn't rank in the top 10.

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Trilogy: Another Ending Part II - Kamen Rider Para-DX with Poppy, the second film in a trilogy that provides an epilogue to the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid series, stayed at #1 in the mini-theater ranking in its second weekend.

Sources: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web, Eiga.com, Kōgyō Tsūshin (link 2)