‘ERASED’ live action adaptation announced by Netflix

The cover visual for Volume 1 of ERASED, written and illustrated by Kei Senbei. Image: Kadokawa Shoten

Kei Senbei’s ERASED (Boku dake ga Inai Machi, “The Town Without Me”) manga will be given a live action adaptation, according to Netflix.

Anime News Network reports that the series will debut in 190 countries later in the year at around winter.

The series is to be directed by Ten Shinomiya, with scripts being written by Tomomi Okubo. Filming will be done in 4K resolution by Kansai TV/Cocoon production and will be shot at Hokkaido Tomakomai City. This also happens to be the real-life locale depicted in the manga.

Playing the lead role of Satoru Fujinuma is actor Yuki Furukawa, who is coincidentally of the same age as the character at 29 years old.

The cast: (Top row, left to right) Reo Uchikawa (young Satoru), Mio Yuki (Airi Katagiri), Rinka Kakihara (child Kayo Hinazuki); (middle, left to right) Shigeyuki Totsugi (Gaku Yashiro), Yuki Furukawa (adult Satoru Fujinuma), Tomoka Kurotani (Sachiko Fujinuma); (bottom, left to right) Noriko Eguchi (Akemi Hinazuki), Jin Shirasu (adult Kenya Kobayashi), and Hidekazu Mishima (Sawada). Image: Netflix

ERASED has received both an anime and a live action movie adaptation in Japan. The anime series ran between January 8 and March of 2016. The live action film debuted in Japanese theaters on March 19 of the same year.

The story is about Satoru Fujinuma who possesses a strange and uncontrollable power to turn back time whenever a life-threatening accident is about to happen. He is one day whisked away to a time 18 years in the past when his mother notices a serial kidnapper, and is later murdered for it. With Satoru now back in his elementary school days, he comes face to face again with an incident that has haunted him all his life: the disappearance and murder of his classmate Kayo Hinazuki.

No other details have been revealed yet but fans of the original work and the well-received anime series will surely be thrilled to witness the new adaptation. Alfred Bayle/JB