SPUNK!, the manga by Hideki Arai, is getting a live-action film. Arai announced on October 1 that the series will be adapted for the screen, written and directed by Keisuke Yoshida, with the movie targeting release next fall.
Who Is Making It
Keisuke Yoshida is handling both the screenplay and the direction. He is the writer and director behind Itoshi no Irene and Mentor, and he and Arai have worked together before — Yoshida directed the live-action film adaptation of Arai’s Itoshi no Irene manga.
The production is also turning to crowdfunding. A campaign page will be launched to help fund the project, seeking 3 million yen, or roughly US$20,000, with a funding window that ends in three months. Attaching a crowdfunding element to a live-action film is unusual for a mainstream production, but it is a way to get a smaller, more explicit project off the ground.
Yumiko Kagami, the owner of the S&M salon Eureka, is joining the project as an “advisor” on the original manga and as the film’s S&M and costume supervisor — a detail that signals how closely the production intends to follow the source material’s specific setting.
What SPUNK! Is About
SPUNK! begins when two women who are opposites in almost every way enter the world of sadomasochism and become “Mistresses.” Natsuna is the headstrong type who craves to love freely. By contrast, Fuyumi is a bookworm who opens her mouth only to mumble hesitant, half-finished thoughts.
Kadokawa’s Monthly Comic Beam published the series between 2022 and 2024. Kadokawa shipped the fourth and final compiled book volume in August 2024, meaning the manga’s complete story is already available for the film to draw from.
A Returning Creative Partnership
The film reunites Arai and Yoshida, whose previous collaboration, the Itoshi no Irene live-action movie, opened in Japan in September 2018. Arai’s Miyamoto kara Kimi e (From Miyamoto to You) manga also inspired a live-action series in 2018, so the author’s work has a track record in live-action adaptation.
Arai has stayed busy in the meantime. He launched the Pi to Po (Pi and Po) manga in Kadokawa’s Comic Beam magazine on January 9. Separately, director Kenji Iwaisawa is working on Hina is Beautiful, an anime film adaptation of Arai’s Hina manga. That movie does not yet have a release date, though its pilot version screened at the Cannes Marché du Film in May 2023.
Why It Matters
Arai’s work has repeatedly moved between manga and live-action, and SPUNK! extends that pattern to a completed, self-contained story, which gives the film a defined arc rather than an ongoing one to compress. The crowdfunding component is also notable: it turns part of the financing into a public project, with supporters effectively backing the adaptation before it is made.
It is a reminder that manga remains one of the most reliable sources of screen material in Japan, feeding both anime and live-action productions. Recent examples keep arriving on both tracks — from manga being tapped for anime treatment, like Where Is the Elf Teacher’s Toilet? getting a TV anime adaptation, to completed manga being packaged for film as SPUNK! now is.
Crowdfunded film adaptations remain rare, and tying one to a manga with an explicit subject matter suggests the production expects to reach an audience directly rather than rely solely on traditional financing. Whether that model works will become clearer once the campaign closes in three months and the film moves toward its planned next-fall release.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: SPUNK! manga announcement visual, via Anime News Network.
