Teasing Master Takagi-san Manga Also Inspires Live-Action Film Set 1 Decade Later

Shogakukan announced on Monday that Sōichirō Yamamoto‘s Teasing Master Takagi-san (Karakai Jōzu no Takagi-san) manga is also inspiring a live-action film that will open in Japan on May 31, 2024. The film tells an original story set 10 years after the original manga’s middle school setting. Mei Nagano (live-action My Broken Mariko, Ni no Kuni, Peach Girl, Burn the House Down, left in image below) plays the titular Takagi, now a trainee teacher in her alma mater, while Fumiya Takahashi (Kamen Rider Zero-One, right) plays Nishikata, now a gym coach in the same school.

Nagano said she had already read the manga and watched the anime before she was offered the role, so she is “thrilled to enter the world of Teasing Master Takagi-san.

Rikiya Imaizumi (live-action Hōzuki-san Chi no Aneki, Chihiro-san, Just Only Love), the director of the manga’s upcoming live-action series, is also directing the film. As with the live-action series, Imaizumi is also co-writing the scripts with Tomoki Kanazawa (Sanctuary, Sabakan) and Jun Hagimori ( Sabakan). Takashi Ohmama (Dances with the Dragons, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, The Gene of AI) is composing the music.

Both the film and the live-action series filmed entirely on location at Kagawa Prefecture’s Shōdo Island, the setting of the earlier anime adaptation.

The manga’s live-action series will premiere on Netflix on Tuesdays next March, with an international release planned. The series will also air in the TBS channel’s Drama Stream programming block in March on Tuesdays at 24:58 (effectively, Wednesdays at 12:58 a.m. JST).

Rui Tsukishima (model for Shueisha‘s Seventeen magazine, Kamen Rider Geats episode guest actress) and fellow teenager Sōya Kurokawa (Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Monster) star as Takagi and Nishikata, respectively.

Yen Press is releasing the manga in English, and it describes the story:

Middle schooler Nishikata has had it with his classmate who sits nearby, Takagi. Day in and day out, she comes after him with every sort of trick or prank. Even when he tries to tease her back, she’s always one step ahead but he’s not about to give up that easily in this battle of cunning and youth!

Yamamoto launched the manga in Gessan mini, the accompanying booklet to Shogakukan‘s Gessan (Monthly Shonen Sunday) magazine, in 2013. After Yamamoto finished serializing his Fudatsuki no Kyōko-chan manga in Gessan in June 2016, Teasing Master Takagi-san moved to Gessan in July 2016. The manga ended serialization on October 12.

The manga has also inspired three television anime seasons and an anime film.

Mifumi Inaba draws a spinoff manga for the franchise titled Karakai Jōzu no (Moto) Takagi-san, which is set when Takagi and Nishikata are married and have a daughter named Chi. The manga launched in Shogakukan‘s Manga ONE in July 2017, and Shogakukan published the manga’s 18th volume on March 10. Inaba also launched a related spinoff manga titled Karakai Jōzu(?) no Nishikata-san in Shogakukan‘s Monthly Shōnen Sunday magazine on November 10. The manga centers on Chi, Nishikata and Takagi’s middle school daughter, as she teases and is teased by the boy sitting next to her in class. The manga will run for 10 chapters.

Source: Comic Natalie