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Sweet Samurai Jesus.

It was only yesterday that we put up five pics from the upcoming redo of 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike and like that we now know who all 13 actors will be. Led by Koji Yakusho, who most around these parts would know from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Retribution, Cure, Pulse, Tokyo Sonata, to name a few, in the lead assassin role of Shimada Shinzaemon, the other dozen actors are Hiroki Matsukata [Izo],  Yusuke Iseya [Blindness, Sukiyaki Western Django and Casshern], Takayuki Yamada [Crows Zero films and Mw], Tsuyoshi Ihara [Letter from Iwo Jima], Arata Furuta [Tokyo Zombie and Zebraman], Ikki Sawamura [Gokusen: The Movie and Steamboy], Sousuke Takaoka [Crows Zero films, Blue Spring and Battle Royale], Yuma Ishigaki [Gokusen: The Movie, Azumi 2 and Battle Royale 2], Masataka Kubota, Seiji Rokkaku [My Boss, My hero], Kazuki Namioka [Crows Zero films, L Change the World and Midnight Eagle], and Koen Kondo [Linda Linda Linda, Zebraman and Nodome Cantabile].

That is a fine mix of veteran and young talent. Filming has only just begun and is expected to go into September which means we still have a ways to go before we get to see this.

The more I see of this upcoming movie addition to the Gokusen canon the more I can see that the production team behind it is really, really catering to only fans of the show. Thus dictates how successful they will be at the box office but with the new trailer and announcement of a lot of the returning cast from the first two seasons making appearances in the film it should boost their success at home in Japan. And then there are the gaijin like me who like the show as well who will want to see this as well but will have to resort to getting it on DVD cause I don’t imagine this could travel outside of Japan as a stand alone film.

With “Gokusen: The Movie” less than a couple months away, a new announcement has revealed that six more actors from the drama’s earlier seasons will be returning,...