Cherry Magic! (Movie)

Cherry Magic! THE MOVIE (チェリまほ THE MOVIE 〜30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい〜) is a 2022 Japanese boys' love romantic comedy film, the direct live-action sequel to the 2020 TV Tokyo drama. Kiyoshi Adachi (Eiji Akaso) and Yuichi Kurosawa (Keita Machida) are back, now happily together and still keeping the relationship to themselves at work. Adachi's mind-reading has not faded, and the film opens on a settled domestic happiness that it then puts under pressure: Adachi is offered a transfer to Nagasaki, roughly 1,200 kilometres from Tokyo, a genuine step forward in his career. The tagline, "30 years of virginity can make you a wizard," keeps the drama's founding joke in place.

The film's real subject is not distance but articulation. Adachi and Kurosawa have never had to define out loud what they are to each other, and the transfer forces the question of whether this is a relationship two people plan a life around or one they simply enjoy while it lasts. Because Adachi can hear Kurosawa's thoughts, he knows precisely how much staying would cost the other man, which makes the decision harder, not easier; the power that once handed him the truth now hands him the guilt that comes with it. The returning ensemble keeps the office world intact around them, with Masato Tsuge (Kodai Asaka), Minato Wataya (Yutaro), Yuta Rokkaku (Takuya Kusakawa), Nozomi Fujisaki (Ryo Sato) and Kengo Urabe (Suzunosuke) each carrying forward threads from the series and supplying the ordinary workplace texture the central dilemma plays out against.

Directed by Hiroki Kazama, who also directed on the drama, and written by Riko Sakaguchi in place of the series' screenwriting team, the 104-minute film opened in Japanese cinemas on April 8, 2022, distributed by Asmik Ace and adapting the manga by Yuu Toyota. The tone stays warm, low-conflict and unhurried throughout, trading the episodic comic set-pieces of the show for a single sustained question. It earned over 400 million yen at the Japanese box office and streams on Netflix, GagaOOLala and U-NEXT.