Promotion for Takashi Yamazaki’s Ballad: Namonaki Koi no Uta hit a bit of a speed bump back in April when SMAP’s Tsuyoshi Kusanagi was arrested for running around Hinokicho Park naked and drunk. I guess gleeful moments like this are frowned upon in Japan (who knew?), so the PR effort for his latest big-budget period drama was put on hold until the appropriate apologies were offered and the smoke had cleared. Apparently everything is back on schedule now because last week the official site for the film was updated with a full trailer. Thanks to logboy for spotting it.

The plot is actually based on an award-winning Crayon Shin-chan animated movie from 2002 in which Shin-chan finds himself back in the Sengoku period. In this version a boy named Shinichi (Akashi Takei) does the time-traveling and meets a feared general named Ijiri Matabei (Kusanagi). Ijiri is in love with Princess Ren (Yui Aragaki) who subsequently rejects an arranged marriage to Okura Itakatora (Takao Osawa), a powerful daimyo of northern Kanto. Enraged by the rejection, Okura sends a large army to Ijiri’s smaller state and it’s up to Shinichi to change their destiny.

“Ballad: Namonaki Koi no Uta” will open in Japan on September 5, 2009.

Official website

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