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Toma Ikuta, Masaki Okada, Chiaki Kuriyama Star in Himitsu - The Top Secret Film
posted on by Egan Loo
Toma Ikuta (Hana-Kimi, We Were There, Akihabara @ DEEP, Honey and Clover, Mogura no Uta) will star in next year's live-action film of Reiko Shimizu's psychological science-fiction shōjo manga Himitsu - The Top Secret. Masaki Okada (Hana-Kimi, Boku no Hatsukoi o Kimi ni Sasagu, Otomen, Mahō Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto, Space Brothers), Chiaki Kuriyama (Battle Royale, Kill Bill, The Sky Crawlers), and Nao Ōmori (Ichi the Killer, Helter Skelter, Parasyte) will co-star in this film.
The mystery manga takes place in Japan five decades from now. Brain scanners have been perfected to the point that the government can retrieve up to five years' worth of memories from people's minds — even if they are dead. As they delve into people's minds to solve crimes, the investigators of the National Research Institute of Police Science's 9th Forensics Laboratory must weigh the ethical choices in the ultimate invasion of privacy.
Ikuta plays Tsuyoshi Maki (pictured left in image above), the brilliant laboratory head haunted by trauma. Okada will play Ikkō Aoki (right), the laboratory's new recruit. Kiriyama will play the forensic medical examiner Yukiko Miyoshi, and Omori will play Shunsuke Manabe, a passionate detective. (Manabe is a character created specifically for the movie, and he did not appear in the manga.) Director Keishi Ōtomo (live-action Rurouni Kenshin, Ryōmaden) began planning this film four years ago, and he began shooting on April 27.
Shimizu launched the manga in Hakusensha's Melody magazine in 2001, although she drew an earlier one-shot manga version in Melody in 1999. Hakusensha published the 12th and final compiled volume of the manga in 2012. The spinoff series Himitsu Season 0 is now running in Melody.
The manga already inspired a television anime in 2008. The Japanese government's Ministry of Cultural Affairs honored the manga with an Excellence Prize in the Japan Media Arts Festival Awards, after it was recommended twice by the awards' jury.
CMX Manga published Shimizu's Moon Child manga in North America.
Sources: Eiga.com, Comic Natalie
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