Miyazaki’s Early Anime Series Being Turned into Stage Play

Several of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies have been made into stage plays: Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Spirited Away is getting international audiences. Now another Miyazaki project is getting the stage play treatment: Future Boy Conan. The official name for the stage adaptation is Stage: Future Boy Conan, so it’s not much different.

If you’re unfamiliar with Future Boy Conan, that might be because it came prior to the Studio Ghibli days. Instead, it was an anime series from Nippon Animation that debuted in 1978, and Miyazaki directed it. In fact, it was his first time being able to direct something by himself. Future Boy Conan is tentatively based around the American novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key.

The stage play will come out next year, with scheduled performances in May and June in Tokyo. After that it will travel around Japan, although dates and places have yet to be revealed.

Stage: Future Boy Conan has two directors: Inbal Pinto, who is Israeli, and David Mambouch, who is French, showing Miyazaki’s worldwide appeal. The script was penned by Yasuro Ito, and Umitaro Abe, whose background includes the anime films Penguin Highway and Drifting Home, is in charge of the music for the play.

GKIDS licensed the original Future Boy Conan anime and also gave it an English dub. GKIDS gave this description for its plot:

Twenty years ago, a terrible war fought with magnetic weapons caused the earth’s axis to tilt, and earthquakes and tidal waves destroyed civilization. Conan is born into this new world, raised by his adopted grandfather on an isolated island. But his life is forever changed when a mysterious girl named Lana washes ashore, pursued by shadowy operatives who seek to use her in a new scheme to control what’s left of the world.

Source: SoraNews24, ANN

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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.