My Hero Academia Announces New Live-Action Play

My Hero Academia is at a much bigger place now than it ever has been. With the original manga turning five years old this year, Kohei Horikoshi’s series has since spawned four seasons of an anime, two feature length anime films, multiple manga spin-offs, novels, video games, and countless merchandise. There is also a Hollywood produced live-action film currently in the works, but fans recently got their first taste at what a live-action take on the series would look like earlier this year in Japan.

With the live-action stage play running to a successful response in Japan earlier this year, it’s proved so popular that another live-action play has been confirmed to be in the works as well. Dubbed My Hero Academia: The “Ultra” Stage: A True Hero, the new play is currently slated for a release in Japan next year.

Preparing to run in Tokyo and Osaka in Spring 2020, the new play will feature Tsuneyasu Motoyoshi returning as director from the first play, Hideyuki Nishimori as scriptwriter, Shunsuke Wada as composer, and Umebo as choreographer. The first run of the play ran earlier this year in Japan, and fans were surprised at just how well many of the series’ more outlandish hero costumes and looks were translated into real life. Even Horikoshi himself complimented the play’s take on the costumes!

It’s currently unclear as to what the next era of the play will entail, and how much of the original story will be adapted for the next phase of the musical, but there’s a hope that the cast from the first run of the play will return along with the staff as well. But unfortunately that’s still hanging in the air as of this writing as well.

My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has powers, even though he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he’s eventually scouted by the world’s best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015. My Hero Academia will also be launching its second big movie, Heroes Rising, in Japan this December.