Ryōhei Ōtani, Tōri Oikawa both play protagonist Hiroshi in time-travel human drama
BARCOS announced on Friday that it is producing a new live-action film adaptation of the late Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood (Harukana Machi e) manga that will open in Japan on October 9.
Image via A Distant Neighborhood live-action film’s X/Twitter account
©2026 映画「遥かな町へ」BARCOS
Ryōhei Ōtani (live-action Golden Kamuy, The Full-Time Wife Escapist) plays protagonist Hiroshi as an adult in his 40s, while Tōri Oikawa plays Hiroshi as a 14-year-old. Momoko Isotani plays Tomoko Nagase, Hiroshi’s friend and crush. Kenichi Takitō plays Hiroshi’s father, while Naho Toda plays Hiroshi’s mother.
Yoshinari Nishikoori is directing the film off a script he also wrote. Eishi Segawa is composing the music.
Fanfare and Ponent Mon released the manga in its original two-volume format in English in 2009, and re-released the manga in a one-volume hardcover in 2016, and once again in 2022. The publishers describe the manga in its most recent 2022 rerelease:
Hiroshi Nakahara is a forty-something salary man returning to Tokyo from an intense business trip when he is catapulted back into his fourteen year-old life and body whilst retaining all the character and experience of the adult. Will he change his past or be forever condemned to relive each painful moment? That fateful day his father disappeared without explanation, the death of his mother… Would he marry his childhood sweetheart and never see his wife and daughters again? Master manga-ka Taniguchi at his most powerful.
Taniguchi serialized the manga in Shogakukan’s Big Comic magazine in 1998. Shogakukan released the manga in two volumes.
The manga previously inspired a 2008 live-action film adaptation by Sam Garbarski, co-produced by Belgian, French, German, and Luxembourgish film companies. This earlier film moved the setting from Japan in 1963 to Paris in 1967.
Fanfare and Ponent Mon released Taniguchi and Masayuki Kusumi’s Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga in English in the U.S. in October 2025. Turnaround Publisher Services in the U.K. released the manga in July 2025. The manga has inspired 11 seasons of a live-action series adaptation, and a live-action film that opened in January 2025. Kusumi and Taniguchi serialized the manga from 1994 to 1996 in Fusosha’s Monthly Panja magazine (now defunct). Kusumi handled the story, and Taniguchi drew the art. Fusosha published the first collected volume in 1997. Kusumi and Fusosha published the manga’s second volume in September 2015. The manga also inspired a net anime that debuted on Production I.G’s “Tate Anime” (Vertical Anime) smartphone app in November 2017.
Taniguchi died in February 2017.
Sources: A Distant Neighborhood live-action film’s website, Comic Natalie
