Military Manga "Aircraft Carrier Ibuki" Gains a 2019 Live-Action Film

Kaiji Kwaguchi’s military manga, “Kubo Ibuki” (Aircraft Carrier Ibuki) has officially been confirmed for a live-action film to be released in 2019.

Announced today in this year’s fifth issue of Shogakukan’s biweekly magazine Big Comic, further details on the film project including its director and main cast, will be revealed in the next issue of the magazine to be released on March 10. The story of the work sets itself in a fictional world where the Japan Self Defense Force has its first aircraft carrier “Ibuki.”

The manga first made its appearance in the in the 24th issue of the magazine which launched in 2014. At the time of the manga’s launch, the magazine gave note on the state of world affairs in relation to the manga. They noted on how change was going at a dizzying rate particularly in the growing military strength of countries neighbouring Japan, the issue of resources on the seafloor, disaster relief, underwater transport, maintaining order on the high seas, and island defense.

In reality, there is an “Ibuki” in the military, but rather than an aircraft, there were warships named as such in the Imperial Japanese Navy. When the launch of the manga was first announced a F-35B Lightning II fighter above a modern carrier was featured on Big Comic’s teaser page.

The series was launched as part of a collaboration with journalist Eya in 2014, and it marks the 50th anniversary of the magazine. Prior to this report, the eight-compiled book volume of the series was released on November 30.

Currently, the ninth tankobon volume is set to be released on March 30 and the manga has been chosen as the winner of the 63rd Shogakukan Manga Award’s “Best General Manga” category and has more than 3 million copies in print.

Other than this series, Kawaguchi is known to have illustrated the time-travelling war manga Zipang in Kodansha’s Morning magazine until 2009. He also serialized the Zipang: Shinsōkairyū series in Morning since 2012 and the historical series “Hyōma no Hata: Revolutionary Wars” a.k.a. “Hyōma’s Flag: Revolutionary Wars”, in Shogakukan’s Big Comic magazine between 2011 and 2014.

Outside of these, he ended his Boku wa Beatles manga in 2012 and had his political manga Eagle in North America published by Viz. Most recently, the “Zipang: Shinsō Kairyū” manga reached its end in November.

Source: Crunchyroll News