The electric catalog will be opened anew, albeit in a new light.
Earlier today, Kyoto Animation’s KA Esuma Bunko imprint announced that the studio will adapt Hiroshi Yuuki’s 20th Century Electric Catalog (20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku) to animation. As of press time, no further details on the adaptation have been announced.
The work took home an “Encouragement Incentive ” award in the 2017 Kyoto Animation Awards. The judges praised the work for its well-developed characters and settings, which helped to support an insightful look at life in modern times.
The book won the first award to be given out at the Kyoto Animation Awards since 2014. In 2015 and 2016, no prizes were awarded. In 2014, Kana Akatsuki’s Violet Evergarden took home the Grand Prize.
The book will ship to retailers on August 10. Kazumi Ikeda will illustrate for the work, with Momoka Nagatani taking a credit for the backgrounds and artwork. An official website was opened to promote the release, which contains a key visual and a story synopsis.
The visual features lead character Inako Momoka looking toward the camera, as a trolley speeds by ahead of her. She’s wearing a blue kimono and carrying a green sack.
20th Century Electric Catalog is set in the summer of Meiji 40 (1907), in Kyoto’s Fushimi region. It’s here that Inako Momoka, the 15-year-old daughter of a sake brewer, calls home. Nothing goes right for the girl, who is repeaedly scolded by her father. For Inako, it’s gotten to the point that her sole source of salvation comes from her prayers to Buddha.
One day, she comes encounters a free-spirited lad named Kihachi Sakamoto while she’s visiting the Fushimi Inari shrine. Kihachi is an eccentric person, who believes not in gods, but instead champions the coming age of electricity.
It’s at this time that the topic of marriage arises in the Momoka household. Inako’s father has taken over the situation, making all the decisions for his daughter. Inako, meanwhile, begins to lose hope. Kihachi manages to bring Inako’s true feelings to the surface, and learns that she desires to escape from her family.
The only way to save the marriage is to buy the a magical book known only as the “Electric Catalog,” a tome that Kihachi wrote as a child that predicted the coming of the electric age. Kihachi’s brother Seiroku took the book, though, and its whereabouts are unknown. With a goal in sight, the two set out to find the Electric Catalog as they journey across the lands of Kyoto and Shiga.
Sources: Otakomu, Twitter (KyoAni)
