Bushiroad president and founder Takaaki Kidani announced at the BanG Dream! franchise‘s “Garupa 6th Anniversary Fan Festa in Akihabara” event on Saturday that he is stepping down as the franchise‘s executive producer.

Kidani had been leading the BanG Dream! project for nine years since its conception. For the past two years, he had already been entrusting the project to other developers.

Bushiroad appointed Kidani as chairperson in June 2020. During that time, he also returned to his former position as a representative director alongside the company’s previous president Yoshitaka Hashimoto.

Kidani had previously stepped down from the representative director position at a stockholder’s meeting in October 2017, and took a position as board member of the company. He stepped down from the position so he could directly lead and manage the production of content better in the company’s following three or four years, which the company called a “decisive” period. Kidani was focused on and directly responsible for developing the company’s intellectual property.

Kidani founded Bushiroad in 2007. The company owns a number of cross-media franchises, some of which originate from its card games. Bushiroad‘s Cardfight!! Vanguard and Future Card Buddyfight series have both inspired long-running television anime series, and its Luck & Logic card game inspired two television anime series. Bushiroad also owns the Weiß Schwarz anime crossover card game. The company owns the Tantei Opera Milky Holmes franchise, as well as the BanG Dream! franchise, both of which have television anime series. The company owns the Revue Starlight franchise, and both BanG Dream! and Revue Starlight have active smartphone games. Additionally, the company owns the New Japan Pro Wrestling promotion.

Bushiroad launched the BanG Dream! multimedia project in January 2015.

The main BanG Dream! television anime’s first 13-episode season premiered in January 2017, and Anime Network Online and Crunchyroll streamed the first season as it aired in Japan. The anime’s second season premiered in January 2019. Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime, and HIDIVE and Crunchyroll both streamed the series as it aired.

The BanG Dream! 3rd Season television anime debuted in January 2020. Sentai Filmworks licensed the season, and HIDIVE and VRV streamed the series as it aired. The BanG Dream! Poppin’ Dream! anime film continued the story from the third season, and it opened in Japan in January 2022. The franchise‘s Morfonica band got a two-episode anime in July 2022.

The franchise also includes the BanG Dream! FILM LIVE and BanG Dream! FILM LIVE 2nd Stage films, the two-part BanG Dream! Episode of Roselia films, as well as several web anime spinoff series.

Sources: Famitsu.com, Gamer via Otakomu

Entertainment news magazine Variety reported on Sunday that Drops of God, the new internationally co-produced, multilingual live-action television series of Tadashi Agi and Shū Okimoto‘s The Drops of God (Kami no Shizuku) manga, will premiere on April 21.

Apple TV+ has acquired the eight-part series and will broadcast and stream it worldwide simultaneously in 2023.

The official title in Japan is Kami no Shizuku/Drops of God. (Similar to the title in Japan for the second Fullmetal Alchemist television series, the live-action series’ title includes both the Japanese and English titles of the manga.)

Legendary Television is handling worldwide distribution outside of France and Japan. Hulu Japan will exclusively stream the series inside Japan alongside its world premiere. The series filmed over 10 months in France, Italy, and Japan.

The series is a collaboration between U.S., French, and Japanese companies. Legendary Television, Dynamic Television, France Televisions, and Hulu Japan are backing the project, and are producing the project with Adline Entertainment. Oded Ruskin (Absentia, No Man’s Land) is directing the series, and Quoc Dang Tran (Marianne, Parallel) wrote the scripts. Dynamic’s Klaus Zimmermann (Borgia, Trapped) is producing the series.

As previously announced, Tomohisa Yamashita (pictured left) and French actress Fleur Geffrier (Elle) star in the series. The announcement noted that Geffrier’s character is named Shizuku Kanzaki, the protagonist of the manga. A previous announcement noted that rival character Issei Tōmine would be the show’s protagonist, but an earlier report in 2021 from entertainment news service Variety described the series as having a female protagonist, with Geffrier playing the role.

Variety describes the story of the TV series:

The story involves a woman who discovers that her estranged father has left her the world’s greatest wine collection in his will. But, to claim her inheritance she must compete against a Japanese man who her father regarded as a son and may have been more.

Siblings Shin and Yuko Kibayashi — under the pen name Tadashi Agi — launched The Drops of God manga with artist Okimoto in Kodansha‘s Morning magazine 2004. A live-action series based on the manga aired in Japan in 2009. The manga ended in June 2014, and the 44th and final compiled book volume shipped in July 2014. The manga’s final arc, titled Marriage ~Kami no Shizuku Saishūshō~ (Marriage ~The Drops of God Final Arc~), launched in May 2015, and it ended in October 2020.

Comixology and Kodansha USA Publishing have released the manga in English digitally.

Throughout its serialization, the manga had famously boosted the sales of wines profiled in the story. The French wine magazine La Revue du vin de France has recognized the manga, giving it the magazine’s top award in 2010. The New York Times also profiled the manga in its Dining and Wine section in 2008.

Source: Variety (Marta Balaga)