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Peach Girl Live-Action Film Casts Mei Nagano as Sae
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The official website for the live-action film adaptation of Miwa Ueda's Peach Girl shōjo manga revealed on Saturday that Mei Nagano (live-action Rurouni Kenshin's Tsubame, live-action My Love Story!!'s Rinko) will play the role of antagonist Sae Kashiwagi in the film.
Mizuki Yamamoto (live-action Black Butler film) will star as Momo and idol group Hey! Say! JUMP's Kei Inoo will play Kairi in his first film role. Kōji Shintoku will direct the film, and Junpei Yamaoka (Kamen Teacher, 2015's Tsuri Baka Nisshi) is writing the screenplay. The film will open in 2017.
The manga centers on an average high school girl named Momo whom everyone thinks sleeps around because of her tanned skin. The actual reason she is so tanned is because she was on the swim team and tans very easily. She has a crush on Toji, a boy whom she's heard only likes non-tanned girls. Momo has low self-esteem and tries to remake herself into someone she thinks Toji would like, but she has a "friend" named Sae who enjoys going behind Momo's back and making her life miserable.
The original shojo manga ran in Kodansha's Bessatsu Friend magazine from its October 1997 issue through its January 2004 issue. Ueda also published a spinoff manga, Peach Girl: Sae's Story, in 2005. Tokyopop published both the original manga and the spinoff in North America, but split the original manga into two separate series: Peach Girl and Peach Girl: Change of Heart.
The series inspired a live-action drama in Taiwan in 2001 and a Japanese television anime in 2005. Funimation released the anime adaptation.
Source: Comic Natalie
