NHK revealed eight additional cast members for the live-action series of Tomoko Boryoku‘s An Older Guy’s VR First Love (VR Ojisan no Hatsukoi) manga on Tuesday.

The newly announced cast members are:

The series will premiere on NHK on April 1 at 10:45 p.m. JST.

Toru Namaguchi stars in the drama as protagonist Naoki Endō in real life. Anna Kurasawa plays Naoki, the online persona of Naoki Endō. Hiroe Igeta plays Honami. Teruyuki Yoshida, Tomohiro Kuwano, Shunsuke Nakamura, and Shinichirō Ishikawa are directing the series. Mash Morino pens the scripts for the series. Takashi Watanabe is composing the music.

Kodansha USA publishes the manga in English, and released the manga in November 2022. Kodansha USA describes the story:

Naoki is forty years old, single, male, and a temp worker. But in the world of VR, he takes on the form of a lovely young girl. There, he meets his first love—the cheerful and beautiful Honami.

Real life, for Naoki, was a failure. The VR world where he escapes to is coming to an end, too. But in those final moments, he finds her…

Boryoku serialized the manga in Ichijinsha‘s Zero-Sum Online website in 2020. Ichijinsha released the manga’s second compiled book volume in February 2023.

Source: Comic Natalie