Fly Me to the Saitama

Fly Me to the Saitama (2019)

翔んで埼玉

People from Saitama Prefecture are persecuted and, because of this, they hide the fact that they are from there. In Tokyo, Momomi Hakuhodo is a male high school student and the son of the Tokyo governor. Physically, Momomi Hakuhodo looks like a girl. One day, he meets mysterious male transfer student Rei Asami. They are attracted to each other, but Rei Asami is from Saitama Prefecture.

Date of release
2019-02-22
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (26)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Hideki Takeuchi
Collection
Fly Me to the Saitama Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $32.8M
  • Based on: Tonde Saitama
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Japannual Audience Award

Fly Me to the Saitama is a 2019 Japanese comedy film directed by Hideki Takeuchi, based on the 1980s manga series of the same name written and illustrated by Mineo Maya.

Production

Hiroki Wakamatsu (Fuji Television), the producer of this film, first worked with the director Hideki Takeuchi, his colleague of Fuji TV at the time, and also with screenwriter Yuichi Tokunaga during the production of Train Man (TV series) (2005). Wakamatsu and Takeuchi had worked together on popular Japanese TV dramas such as Nodame Cantabile (2006), but their opportunities to work together had decreased gradually.

In February 2015, Maya's eldest daughter Marie Yamada, who is in charge of public relations of Maya, mentioned on social media about the "Fly Me to the Saitama" which was already out of print. This work led to it being reprinted by Takarajimasha in the December 2015, and it became a social phenomenon and a sudden boom, especially in Saitama Prefecture.

Though, from the perspective of compliance, there were strong voices of opposition to the production of this film within Fuji TV about discrimination for a specific area, Saitama Prefecture. So, the planning of this film ran into difficulties. In the end, the production was green-lit after the boss of Takeuchi and Wakamatsu decided that the combination of two would make an interesting film.

Because of this film's crazy content, both Wakamatsu and Takeuchi were extremely worried that riots might break out among the people of Saitama Prefecture until the film was released. Thus, they created a list of anticipated questions and answers for dealing with complaints from Saitama Prefecture's people, and distributed the list to the relevant departments at Fuji TV and Toei Company.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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