NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan announced on Tuesday that ODDTAXI writer Kazuya Konomoto’s coming-of-age crime suspense manga series Spinner Bait will receive a live-action television series adaptation on Fuji TV in June. The series will also be available on streaming services in Japan like FOD and TVer.
Image via Comic Natalie
© 2026年 日本ドラマ © 此元和津也／幻冬舎コミックス／ＮＢＣユニバーサル・エンターテイメントジャパン
Image via Comic Natalie
© 2026年 日本ドラマ © 此元和津也／幻冬舎コミックス／ＮＢＣユニバーサル・エンターテイメントジャパン
The story begins when Kōta Mitsui (Kato) gets tired of high school life and joins what he thinks is a fishing club — but it is actually a vigilante group known as “Spinner Bait” that entraps criminals via blackmail. Mitsui starts at the bottom of the group’s pecking order, and he is eventually embroiled in serial killings that rock the town.
The series stars (back row, left to right in photo above):
- Asahi Ito, an odd person who joins Spinner Bait to blow off his stress
- Kaname Yoshizawa as Yusuto Takahashi, a mysteriously idiosyncratic member of Spinner Bait
- So Okuno as Daiki Terayama, Spinner Bait’s leader who looks up to a yakuza boss
- Seishirō Katō as Kōta Mitsui, the protagonist
- Mamoru Hagiwara as Shinjirō Uchi, a serious but weak-willed student who acts as an errand boy
(front row, left to right):
- Touji as Ren Hibara, a first-year student who, despite being younger, uses Mitsui and Uchi as errand boys
- Nao Takahashi as Tsuyoshi Tamaki, Spinner Bait’s number 2
Ryotaro Hirase is directing the series based on scripts by Tomomi О̄kubo, Masaki Nishigaki, and Shintaro Mitani. Daisuke Nishimura is composing the music for the series.
Konomoto serialized the manga in Gentosha’s Comic Birz magazine from 2010 to 2011. Gentosha Comics published the manga’s first compiled book volume in 2010, and the series concluded with the third volume in August 2011.
Konomoto and artist Ryō Yamasaki launched a new manga titledKami Kill (a play on “kami kiru,” which is how “cut hair” would be said in Japanese) in Shueisha’s Young Jump magazine on August 21. MANGA Plus publishes the series in English. Shueisha shipped the second volume on February 19.
Konomoto has collaborated with director Baku Kinoshita on the ODDTAXI original anime and the original anime film The Last Blossom, with Konomoto writing and Kinoshita directing both anime. ODDTAXI premiered in Japan in April 2021 and aired for 13 episodes. Crunchyroll streamed the anime in the West. The Odd Taxi: In the Woods film is a “reconstruction” of the television anime episodes, but it also depicts what happens after the television anime’s finale. The film opened in April 2022. Crunchyroll is streaming the film.
Konomoto also collaborated with manga artist Takeichi Abaraya on the RoOT/Route of Odd Taxi (stylized with a backwards R in “RoOT”) manga spinoff, which launched in February 2023 on Big Comic Superior’s web manga site Darupana, and ended in April 2025. The manga’s sixth and final volume shipped on May 30. The spinoff manga itself inspired its own live-action series that premiered in April 2024. Crunchyroll streamed the series.
The Last Blossom (Housenka, an anime film written by Konomoto, screened in the Feature Film Competition at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival. A preview of the film was part of the Work in Progress lineup in last year’s Annecy Film Festival. The film opened in Japan on October 10.
Sources: Live-action Spinner Bait’s official website, Comic Natalie
