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In April 2002, the live-action adaptation of the hit Gokusen series premiered on Japanese television. After two decades, the show is finally available in its entirety for the first time for Prime Video subscribers in North America.

Based on a hit manga by Kozueko Morimoto, Gokusen is a comedic take on Japan's popular "yakuza" genre. Wtk -- an X (formerly Twitter) page that covers prominent anime streaming releases -- spotlighted the live-action Gokusen series soon after it launched on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service. The series is available in its original Japanese language track with various subtitle options, including English, Indonesian, Thai and Japanese.

Related Unique Feel-Good Anime's Removal From Prime Video Creates More Lost Streaming Media

The beloved Girls' Last Tour anime, combining a dystopia with a feel-good experience, has left its last available streaming platform in the U.S.

Gokusen Is the Perfect Watch for Fans of Yakuza Action...

A treat awaits My Hero Academia enthusiasts as the series prepares to return to its cinematic debut in North America with the upcoming re-release of its first feature film.

In an announcement from Crunchyroll, the anime film, My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, originally gracing screens in 2018, will soon be available to stream. It will officially start streaming on Aug. 17 at 5 p.m. Pt. This feature marks the return of director Kenji Nagasaki, accompanied by Yosuke Kuroda as the scriptwriter, and Yoshihiko Umakoshi who designs the character in this Bones production.

Related: My Hero Academia Doesn’t Have a Lois Lane Equivalent – It Has Two

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, a 2018 Japanese animated superhero film, spins an original tale that spotlights the beloved characters from the My Hero Academia manga series penned by Kōhei Horikoshi. A collaborative effort by Bones in production and Toho in distribution, the film features an ensemble...

On Monday it was announced that Sho Sakurai and Keiko Kitagawa will be starring in a movie version of Fuji TV’s Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de, a 10-episode TV drama which aired from October-December last year.

Based on a best-selling novel by Tokuya Higashigawa, the drama starred Kitagawa as an ultra rich heiress named Reiko Hosho who hid her status to work as a rookie police officer by day. Sakurai played her perfectionist butler Kageyama who offered helpful advice delivered with his own unique brand of brutal honesty.

The movie version will be largely the same, just on a larger scale. Shooting will take place mostly aboard the “SuperStar Virgo”, the largest luxury liner in Asia.

In the movie, Reiko boards her family’s luxury cruise ship, the “Princess Reiko”, along with Kageyama and embarks on a vacation to Singapore. While on-board, a murder occurs and the two...

On Tuesday, further cast members were announced for the upcoming Strawberry Night movie, including Takao Osawa and Tomokazu Miura as brand new characters.

It was previously known that Yuko Takeuchi would be reprising her role from the 2010 Fuji TV special and 2012 drama as the main protagonist, detective Reiko Himekawa.

The film is based on Tetsuya Honda’s 2009 novel “Invisible Rain” and features a story of forbidden love between Himekawa and a gangster played by Osawa.

The story begins with Himekawa investigating the slaughter of a low-ranking yakuza. Due to the victim’s affiliations, the case is initially written off as a gang dispute and put on the back-burner due to a lack of conclusive evidence. Later, they receive a phone tip implicating a man named Kento Yanai as the perpetrator, but the higher-ups order that no further investigation be done of that particular name.

Going against that order, Himekawa begins...

The official website for Yukichi Otsuka’s Soup has been updated with a new trailer embed.

The story was inspired by Ken Morita’s “Umarekawari no Mura”, a non-fiction novel about people in China who claim to remember past lives. The idea of a “legendary soup” came from the book and became the basis of the movie.

In his first starring film role, Katsuhisa Namase plays a 50-year-old salaryman named Kenichi Shibutani who’s been divorced for five years and has an awkward relationship with his daughter Mika (Yuiko Kariya). The day before Mika’s 15th birthday, he’s killed by a bolt of lightning on the side of the road along with one of his superiors from the office, Ayase (Manami Konishi).

In the afterlife, they’re told they can be reincarnated if they drink a “legendary soup”, but they’ll lose all memories from their former life in the process.

Koki Mitani’s already-big upcoming comedy Once in a Blue Moon (Suteki na Kanashibari) just got a little bigger.

It was previously announced that the film would star Eri Fukatsu as a third-rate lawyer who’s forced to depend on a 421-year-old ghost (Toshiyuki Nishida) as the sole witness to her client’s innocence.

Earlier today, a bunch of new names were added to the cast list, including Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (Smap), Masachika Ichimura, Takayuki Kinoshita (Tko). Fumiyo Kohinata, Takashi Kobayashi, Kan, Sen Yamamoto, Keiko Toda, Kazuyuki Asano, Katsuhisa Namase, Zen Kajihara, Kenji Anan, and Yoshimasa Kondo.

In addition to the casting update, Toho also revealed the theatrical release date: October 29, 2011.

Sources: Tokyograph, Cinema Today...

Teppei Koike and Katsuhisa Namase are set to star in a film adaptation of the Nhk comedy show Salaryman Neo.

The Nhk series, which depicts a loose office atmosphere, has been a surprise hit with office workers across Japan since debuting as a 1-off special in 2004 and coming back as a regular show in 2006.

This will be Koike’s first appearance in the series, and the film version will feature an original story. Koike will play a new employee at a company while Namase plays his irrational section manager.

Turmoil erupts as a new product plan is revealed in an impromptu meeting, insuring a gloomy future for employees.

Ikki Sawamura and Sei Hiraizumi, who also appeared in the show, will play supporting roles.

Filming will begin in mid-April, with a national release planned for November.

Sources: Tokyograph, Cinema Today...

Year: 2009

DVD Release date: Unknown

Directors: Takashi Miike

Writers: Tatsuo Yoshida

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: Bob Doto

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Manhattan is a city of numbered blocks divided into streets and avenues. Streets are short. They take one minute to traverse. Avenues are long. They take four minutes of "Are we still only at 6th?" to traverse. So, when I walked down 57th St. approaching the Director’s Guild Theater for the World Premiere of Takashi Miike’s much anticipated film Yatterman and came upon an entire avenue of people cued up, I was walking passed four minutes worth of people! That was an hour-and-half before the doors even opened. By the time 8pm rolled around there could’ve been ten minutes of people for all I knew. I didn’t know. I’m press, so, ‘scuse me, pardon me. I have a ticket. I go in first.

God bless you Takashi Miike and Kyoko Fukada. This week the young actress known by the popular tag, Fukakyon, showed off her costume for Japanese maverick director Takashi Miike’s upcoming adaptation of the 1970s animation Yatterman.

Fukada, 26, reportedly helped in the design of the bondage-style outfit, and said she loves the result. To that I say, ‘Derrrr!’

Doronjo posed for cameras along with her villain buddies Boyacky, played by Katsuhisa Namase, 48, and Tonzra, played by Kendo Kobayashi, 36. In the upcoming movie, the evil trio attempt to find a mysterious stone which is said to reveal the location of the world’s largest gold deposit.

I'm constantly grumbling about Americans remaking Asian films -- the idea of Steven Spielberg trying to redo Park Chan-wook's Oldboy with Will Smith is potentially the most cringe-worthy of them all -- so, to be fair, I suppose I should be complaining that a Japanese remake of Alexander Payne's Sideways recently started filming in Napa Valley, California, according to Variety. But an unrelated comic book may hold the key to the remake's appeal.

Payne's superb tale of romantic yearning and mid-life anxiety famously centers on wine snob Paul Giamatti (he praised pinot noir and derided merlot) and his much coarser buddy Thomas Haden Church as they wine, dine, and romance Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. The movie's success caused a strong surge in sales of pinor noir in the Us.

Japan doesn't seem to have an equivalent wine culture; owing to weather, soil, and scarcity of land, the country is not well-suited to viticulture,...