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The World of Machida-kun Live-Action Film Announces Main Cast

The official website for the live-action film adaptation of Yuki Andō's The World of Machida-kun manga announced the cast on Tuesday. Director Yūya Ishii (live-action The Great Passage) personally oversaw a large-scale audition with more than 1,000 participants and picked newcomers Kanata Hosoda (top left in image below) and Nagisa Sekimizu (top right in image below) to star as Hajime Machida and Nana Inohara, respectively.

Machida's classmates include (left to right in the middle row of the image above):

• Takanori Iwata as Yū Himuro
• Mitsuki Takahata as Sakura Takashima
• Atsuko Maeda as Lila Sakae
• Taiga as Ryōta Nishino

Other characters include (left to right in the bottom row):

• Sōsuke Ikematsu as Yōhei Yoshitaka
• Erika Toda as Sayaka Yoshitaka
• Kōichi Satō as Hino
• Nanako Matsushima as Momoka Machida, Machida's mother
• Yukiya Kitamura as Ayuta Machida, Machida's father

(Note: Character name romanizations not confirmed.)

The film will open on June 7. Filming began in July 2018. The movie is Ishii's first film adaptation of a shōjo manga, and he is filming it on 35 mm film instead of the more modern digital format.

In the manga, Machida is a quiet, awkward, bespectacled boy, whose slightly below-average grades belie his appearance. He thinks there is nothing special about himself, but all around him there are people who treasure him.

Andō launched the manga in Shueisha's Bessatsu Margaret magazine in March 2015 and ended the series last April. Shueisha published the manga's seventh and final compiled book volume on May 25.

The manga ranked third on Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! list of top manga for female readers in 2015. The manga won Andō a new face award at the 19th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards in 2015 and the new creator prize at the 20th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize awards in 2016. The series was nominated for the Manga Taisho in 2016.

Sources: The World of Machida-kun film's website, Comic Natalie