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WOTAKOI: LOVE IS HARD FOR OTAKU

By Yuichi FUKADA

Comedy - Completed 2019

A pure, awkwardly charming love story featuring two otaku.

The live-action adaptation of the blockbuster web manga “Otaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii” voted “Top web manga we’d like to see in print”.

- Year of production
- 2019
- Genres
- Comedy, Drama
- Countries
- JAPAN
- Languages
- JAPANESE
- Duration
- 114 mn
- Director(s)
- Yuichi FUKADA
- Cast
- Mitsuki TAKAHATA, Kento YAMAZAKI
- Synopsis
- 【INTRODUCTION】
  The blockbuster web manga “Otaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii” voted “Top web manga we’d like to see in print” will be adapted to live-action. Mitsuki Takahata and Kento Yamazaki will co-star and Yuichi Fukuda will direct the film. The film is based on a web manga serialized since 2014 on “pixiv”, an online community for illustrators. The pure, awkwardly charming love story featuring two otaku was an instant hit. Once it was made into a manga, it won first place in the “Girls” category of “Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2016” and then was featured as an anime in April 2018.
  Playing the heroine Narumi in the live-action film adaptation is the talented up-and-coming actress Mitsuki Takahata, whose credit include the NHK serial TV novel “Toto Nechan” (2016), drama “Kahogo no Kahoko” (2017) and film “DESTINY: The Tale of Kamakura” (2017).
  Kento Yamazaki plays the computer game otaku Hirotaka Nifuji who becomes Narumi’s love interest. Yamazaki recently wrapped up the final episode of “Good Doctor” in which he plays a surgeon with Savant Syndrome. This is his second project with Director Fukuda since starring in “Psychic Kusuo.” Directing the film is Yuichi Fukuda, known for his unique comedic sense and worldview in films such as “Gintama” series (2017, 2018) and “Fifty First Kisses” (2018). He has also produced a number of musicals including “Young Frankenstein” (2017) and “Bullets Over Broadway” (2018). Fukuda will incorporate singing and dancing scenes that don’t appear in the original work.Fukuda also worked with Takahata in the musical “Smart Mote-lyman Koza” (2013) and films “HK / Hentai Kamen” (2013) and “Jossy’s” and with Yamazaki in the film “Psychic Kusuo” (2017).
  
  【STORY】
  26-year-old office worker Narumi Momose (Mitsuki Takahata) is a secret fan of Boys’ Love mangas. (Genre mostly for women depicting male homosexual relationships) Her greatest fear is being discovered by her colleagues that she’s a closet “otaku”—a fact she keeps hidden from family and even her closest friends. Narumi is reunited with her childhood friend Hirotaka Nifuji (Kento Yamazaki) when she moves to a new firm. The good-looking, capable Hirotaka is actually a hard-core computer game otaku. Hirotaka is the only person Narumi can be totally herself around.
  While having drinks after work, the two hit it off with lively otaku banter. Narumi had recently been dropped by her boyfriend when she was “outed” as an otaku and she swears to never reveal her secret to her next boyfriend. But Hirotaka convinces her of the advantages of an otaku dating an otaku. They decide to give it a try and embark on a fulfilling otaku relationship…but challenges and obstacles threaten their newfound otaku love…