Film opens in Japan on October 19, in N. America this winter

The official website for the anime film project of Waki Yamato 's Haikara-san ga Tooru manga revealed on Friday that Maaya Sakamoto is joining the cast of the second film Haikara-San: Here Comes Miss Modern Part 2 ( Haikara-san ga Tōru Kōhen: Hana no Tōkyō Dai Roman ) as the character Larisa (left in image below). Larisa is the wife of Sasha (right), a noble from Russia who emigrated to Japan.

The film will open in Japan on October 19, and Eleven Arts will screen the film in the U.S. and Canada this winter.

Toshiaki Kidokoro ( March comes in like a lion episode director, Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or the Bottom? line director) is replacing the previously announced Mitsuko Kase ( Ristorante Paradiso , Young Black Jack ) as the director of Gekijōban Haikara-san ga Tōru Kōhen: Hana no Tōkyō Dai Roman .

Saori Hayami , who plays protagonist Benio Hanamura, will perform the new theme song "Atarashii Ashita" (New Tomorrow). Mariya Takeuchi ( Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple , Toki no Tabibito -Time Stranger- ) is again composing and writing the lyrics for the song.

The story is set in Tokyo in the Taishō era (1912-1926). The story follows Benio "Haikara-san" Hanamura, who lost her mother when she was very young and has been raised by her father, a high-ranking official in the Japanese army. As a result, she has grown into a tomboy — contrary to traditional Japanese notions of femininity, she studies kendo, drinks sake, dresses in often outlandish-looking Western fashions instead of the traditional kimono, and is not as interested in housework as she is in literature. She also rejects the idea of arranged marriages and believes in a woman's right to a career and to marry for love.

Haikara-san's best friends are the beautiful Tamaki, who is much more feminine than Haikara-san but equally interested in women's rights, and Ranmaru, a young man who was raised to play female roles in the kabuki theater and as a result has acquired very effeminate mannerisms. Haikara-san's betrothed is Shinobu Ijūin, a second lieutenant in the army.

Th first film, Gekijōban Haikara-san ga Tōru Zenpen - Benio, Hana no 17-sai , opened in Japan last November. Eleven Arts screened the first film theatrically in the United States and Canada with the title Haikara-San: Here Comes Miss Modern Part 1 beginning on June 8.