Bunny Drop Manga Gets Live-Action Movie

Imagine having to shelter a lonely 6-year-old girl who's just lost her father... who in turn was your grandfather! Now, if you somehow managed to wrap your mind around the idea of an illegitimate loli-aunt, and are starting to get those kind of weird thoughts... better snap out of it. This may sound like a sick plot, but the Bunny Drop manga tells a relatively normal slice-of-life / comedy story. Normal enough to make it into a live-action movie, it turns out.



The film adaptation is being announced this week in a women's magazine called Feel Young, published in Japan by Shodensha. Over there, the Bunny Drop manga is better known as Usagi Drop. It's authored by Yumi Unita, who's been serializing it in said magazine since 2005, and so far it was compiled into 8 volumes.

The first 4 volumes are focused on the "loli" version of Rin (the aforementioned orphaned girl), while the following volumes seem to shift focus over to her later life as a teenager. Yen Press began releasing the manga's first volume in North America earlier this year, with three more planned throughout September 2011, roughly one every six months. Below is the Bunny Drop synopsis as provided by Yen Press.

Going home for his grandfather’s funeral, thirty-year-old bachelor Daikichi is floored to discover that the old man had an illegitimate child with a younger lover! The rest of his family is equally shocked and embarrassed by this surprise development, and not one of them wants anything to do with the silent little girl, Rin. In a fit of angry spontaneity, Daikichi decides to take her in himself! But will living with this overgrown teenager of man help Rin come out of her shell? And hang on, won’t this turn of events spell doom for Daikichi’s love life?!

Actual details about the live-action movie version of Bunny Drop should follow... some other time.

In other live-action news, the historical medical manga Jin will be getting a second TV series starting next April. The first season of Jin aired last year, and earlier this year a rumour about a live-action movie version of Jin was swiftly shot down in denial.