[News] Itazura na Kiss Manga Gets New Live-Action TV Drama.

[News] Itazura na Kiss Manga Gets New Live-Action TV Drama.
Cr. - animenewsnetwork

Kaoru Tada's classic unfinished shōjo manga Itazura Na Kiss is getting a new television drama adaptation starting on March 29. The Itazura Na Kiss ~Love in Tokyo drama will star 16-year-old model and actress Honoka Miki (Suzuki-sensei, Maria Watches Over Us) as Kotoko and 25-year-old Yūki Furukawa (High School Debut, Rich Man, Poor Woman) as Naoki. Miki herself is a huge fan of Tada's work, and owns all of the manga volumes.

Yūki Yamada (2012's GTO, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger) will also star in the series as Naoki's love rival Kinnosuke Ikezawa. The series will have a total of 16 episodes.

In the romantic comedy, a high school girl named Kotoko finally tells a fellow senior named Naoki that she has loved him from afar since she saw him on their first day of high school.

However, Naoki, a haughty "super-ikemen" (handsome male) with smarts and sports talent, rejects her offhand. Fate intervenes when a mild earthquake ruins Kotoko's family house. While the house gets rebuilt, Kotoko and her dad stay at the home of her dad's childhood friend...whose son is Naoki.

The story follows Naoki and Kotoko through high school and beyond, but the manga is unfinished because Tada passed away in an accident in 1999. The popular manga has more than 30 million copies in print.

The story was previously adapted into a television drama series in Japan in 1996, two drama series in Taiwan under the name It Started with a Kiss in 2005 and 2007, a 2008 stage play, a 2008 television anime series, and a drama series in South Korea in 2010.

Digital Manga Inc. is publishing the series in North America, and the company will release the 10th volume in November.