The official website for the live-action film of Hirohiko Araki‘s (, or literally, Rohan Kishibe Goes to the Louvre; in French) manga announced on Tuesday that the film will debut on Amazon Prime Video in Japan, France, and 160 other countries and territories around the world on September 22.
The film opened in Japan on May 26. The film sold 221,000 tickets in its first three days to earn 315 million yen (about US$2.26 million).
Issei Takahashi (, live-action , ) reprised his role as Rohan Kishibe. Marie Iitoyo (, ) also returned as Kyoka Izumi, Rohan’s editor. Kento Nagao plays Rohan during his younger days.
Kazutaka Watanabe ( live-action special) returned to direct the film, with scripts once again by anime writer Yasuko Kobayashi. Naruyoshi Kikuchi () also returned to compose the music. Isao Tsuge (, ) returned as character design supervisor, and Naoko Saitō, Keisuke Tsuchihashi, and Sangkeun Han were production coordinators. NHK Enterprises, NHK, and P.I.C.S. produced the film.
The live-action series’ two most recent episodes premiered on December 26 and 27 last year.
The first three episodes debuted in December 2020 for three consecutive nights on the NHK General channel. The second installment of three episodes premiered at the end of December 2021 for three consecutive nights as well. Retro Crush is streaming the first three episodes.
The spinoff manga’s 11th story titled “Dripping Gahō-hen” (Dripping Art Technique) debuted in Shueisha‘s magazine in April 2022, with its second part premiering that May.
The anime studio david production adapted two stories as original anime DVDs. The “Fugō Mura” (Millionaire Village) episode was available for people who purchased all 13 DVD or Blu-ray Disc volumes of the anime in 2017. The “Mutsukabezaka” (Mutsukabe Hill) episode was bundled with the manga’s second volume in 2018. Crunchyroll screened the overseas premiere of “Fugō Mura” at its Crunchyroll Expo event in August 2019. The studio david production then produced two new episodes, “Zange-shitsu” (Confessional Room) and “The Run,” which played at nine screenings at six cities in Japan between December 2020 and March 2021.
Netflix began streaming the anime globally in February 2021 with lead actor Landon McDonald.
North American graphic novel publisher NBM Publishing released the 128-page full-color manga in February 2012. NBM describes :
Rohan, a young mangaka, meets a beautiful mysterious young woman with a dramatic story. Seeing him draw, she tells him of a cursed 200 year old painting using the blackest ink ever known from a 1000 year old tree the painter had brought down without approval from the Emperor who had him executed for doing so. The painting meanwhile had been saved from destruction by a curator of the Louvre. Rohan forgets this story as he becomes famous but ten years later, visiting Paris, he takes the occasion to try and locate the painting. Little does he know how violently powerful the curse of it is until he has the museum unearth it from deep within its archival bowels…
Araki originally created the manga for the “Le Louvre invite la bande dessinée” (“Cartoons – The Louvre Invites Comic-Strip Art”) exhibition at France’s famed Louvre art museum in 2009.
Sources: film’s website, Comic Natalie
