Kitamura Takumi stars in the Netflix series Yu Yu Hakusho.

Netflix has announced that Kitamura Takumi, a rising star, singer, model and actor, will star in its live-action series Yu Yu Hakusho, based on Togashi Yoshihiro’s hit manga. The series is scheduled to start on the streamer in December 2023.

Kitamura broke into the hit romance drama Let Me Eat Your Pancreas in 2017. He has since starred in Take Masaharu’s 2020 boxing drama Underdog, Hanabusa Tsutomu’s 2021 manga adaptation Tokyo Revengers, and Matsumoto Hana’s 2022 relationship drama The End of the Pale Hour. .

In the series, he plays Yusuke Urameshi, a criminal who dies saving a child and is given a second chance at life in the spirit world. When he returns to the world of the living, he becomes their defender against supernatural threats.

Executive Producer is Sakamoto Kazutaka, who also produced the Netflix hit series Alice in Borderland and The Naked Director, as well as the lesbian road movie Ride or Die for Netflix.

The director is Tsukikawa Sho, whose credits include “Let Me Eat Your Pancreas”. “From the beginning, we knew we were making a series for a global audience,” Tsukikawa said in a statement. “…I will continue to put my heart and soul into the project to bring the best of Japanese entertainment to the world.”

In a July 8 media event, Netflix showed assembled journalists how it’s changing local production methods to attract this audience, bringing what “Yu Yu Hakusho” producer Morii Akira described as “Hollywood-level skills” to the project a.

Examples include everything from technical improvements such as color management (minimizing color variation in post-production) and volumetric capture (capturing performance in a 3D environment) to changing industry working practices. “In Japan, the work environment can be very hierarchical and even harsh, with long hours and an often tense atmosphere,” said Ozawa Teiji, director of physical production at Netflix. “By changing this step by step, we hope that the industry will become a better place for the younger generation. When that happens, we will be able to create better content that can inspire the world.”