Ni No Kuni is being made into a movie

The JRPG series Ni No Kuni is being made into an animated movie by Level-5, and will release in Japan this summer. It's being directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, who as well as working on both Ni No Kuni games has directed several shorts and commercials for Studio Ghibli. Composer Joe Hisaishi is another familiar name for Ghibli fans, having scored movies including Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.

It will apparently tell a new story in the Ni No Kuni setting, about a boy named Yu (voiced by Kento Yamazaki, who voiced L in the Death Note anime) who travels there from the real world with his friend Kotona. The script is being written by Akihiro Hino, Level-5's CEO, who will also be executive producer. The animation's being handled by OLM, of Pokémon, Inazuma, and Berserk fame.

There's no word of a release outside Japan yet, but fingers crossed.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.