Sakura Kiryu Joins Live Action Strobe Edge Series Ahead of October 31 Premiere

Sakura Kiryū, known for her roles in Weathering With You and Lonely Castle in the Mirror, has been cast in the live action series adaptation of Io Sakisaka’s Strobe Edge manga. She will play Mao Sugimoto, a character who was a year below Ren and Andō during their junior high school days. Mao is described as central to the story in the series’ second season.

The live action series is planned across two seasons to cover the full manga. The first season debuts on WOWOW on October 31 at 11:00 PM and runs for six episodes. Riko Fukumoto stars as protagonist Ninako Kinoshita, with Kyohei Takahashi playing Ren Ichinose. The production brings back much of the same team behind WOWOW’s previous Io Sakisaka adaptation, Blue Spring Ride, which ran across two seasons in 2023 and 2024. Directors Masato Kimura and Yūsuke Matsuda are returning, as is scriptwriter Sayaka Kuwamura.

Strobe Edge also received a 32-page spinoff chapter in the November issue of Bessatsu Margaret, which shipped on October 10. That story focused on the character Takumi Andō. The manga had previously been adapted into a live action film that opened in Japan in March 2015, starring Sōta Fukushi and Kasumi Arimura.

Sakisaka launched the manga in Bessatsu Margaret in 2007 and completed it in 2010. VIZ Media published the 10-volume series in English and has also released several of Sakisaka’s other works, including Blue Spring Ride, Sakura Saku!, and Love Me Love Me Not.

My take: Strobe Edge is a quietly lovely manga, and the Blue Spring Ride adaptation showed that this team understands how to handle Sakisaka’s particular emotional sensibility. Sakura Kiryū is a genuinely compelling choice for Mao, and it is nice to see this series getting the same care the previous adaptation received.