The completion screening event of new movie "Teiichi no Kuni" was held at Tokyo International Forum on 11 April which was attended by the director Nagai Akira and cast members Suda Masaki, Nomura Shuhei, Takeuchi Ryoma, Mamiya Shotaro, Shison Jun, Chiba Yuudai and Nagano Mei. About 4,000 people gathered for the event and the movie will be officially released in cinemas from 29 April.
The movie which is based on the same-titled manga by Furuya Usamaru that has been serialised in "JUMP SQ" from 2010, is set at Kaitei Senior High School which is the No.1 high school in Japan. Suda plays the role of Akaba Teiichi who dreams of becoming the Prime Minister and wants to create his own country. As such, when he enters Kaitei, he aims to become the student council chairman and takes part in an intense election in order to achieve his goal. Yoshida Kotaro plays Teiichi's father Akaba Jousuke who is a government official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry while Nagano plays Teiichi's girlfriend Shiratori Mimiko. Nomura, Takeuchi and Shison all play Year 1 students i.e. Tougou Kikuma, Ootaka Dan and Sakakibara Koumei respectively while Mamiya and Chiba play Year 2 students Himuro Roland and Morizono Okuto who are all vying for the coveted chairman position.
When asked about assembling a cast consisting of the hottest young actors, director Nagai admitted that it would probably be impossible to do the same now compared to one year ago when they were preparing for this movie, given the popularity of his cast. As such, he felt that this movie was especially memorable in this sense.
During the event, the male cast also put up a taiko performance which will be featured in the movie as well as this is a traditional event of Kaitei's cultural festival while Nagano stood in the middle of the circle to cheer them on. Halfway through, Nomura broke his drum stick but still managed to finish the performance. At the end, Nomura joked to the audience that he would give away the broken drum stick to the audience which led to cheers from everyone. On the other hand, Chiba and Takeuchi did not play the taiko in the movie so this performance was their first attempt at playing it. Takeuchi revealed wryly that he made many mistakes and marveled at how the rest could do this during the filming because his arms were already hurting from just performance. When it was Chiba's turn to speak, the others kept butting in by teasing him and revealed that he was nicknamed "Jijii" (old man) because he is the oldest among the cast.
When asked about the happenings during the filming, Suda revealed that he brought his guitar along so he played it during the breaks while Takeuchi sang along with him. By the end of the event, the audience were allowed to take photos of the cast freely.
Sources:
Eiga.com /
Sanspo /
Oricon
