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Live-Action Solitary Gourmet Show Gets 9th Consecutive New Year's Special

TV Tokyo announced on Thursday that the live-action series of Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi's Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga will have its ninth consecutive New Year's special, tentatively titled Kodoku no Gourmet 2025 Ōmisoka Special. The special will air on December 31 starting at 9:55 p.m. JST, and for the first time in five years, part of the special will be a live broadcast.

The special will again star Yutaka Matsushige as Gorō Inagashira, and will center on Gorō traveling around eastern Japan to gather ingredients for a New Year's Eve event.

Both the live-action Solitary Gourmet series and the original manga follow a solitary salesman named Gorō Inagashira as he travels all over Japan and samples the local cuisine found on street corners. The live-action show's 10th season premiered in October 2022.

The franchise also had a six-episode live-action mini-series project titled Kodoku no Gourmet ~Oishii kedo Horo Nigai... Inagashira Gorō no Sainan~ (Solitary Gourmet ~It's Tasty But Slightly Bitter... Gorō Inagashira's Misfortune~) that debuted on the Paravi and Hikari TV streaming services in March to April 2022.

Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi first serialized the Kodoku no Gourmet manga from 1994 to 1996 in Fusosha's Monthly Panja magazine (now defunct). Kusumi handled the story, and Taniguchi drew the art. Fusosha published the first collected volume in 1997. Kusumi and Fusosha published the manga's second volume in September 2015. Taniguchi died in February 2017.

The manga also inspired a net anime that debuted on Production I.G's "Tate Anime" (Vertical Anime) smartphone app in November 2017.

Fanfare and Ponent Mon released the manga in English in the U.S. on October 28. Turnaround Publisher Services in the U.K. released the manga on July 17.

Sources: Live-action Solitary Gourmet series' website, Comic Natalie