The case art for the U.K. DVD release of Osamu Fukutani's The Manual (Jisatsu manyuaru) - a.k.a. "The Suicide Manual" - has been made public (see here for a much larger JPEG than the one on the left). This Screen Entertainment Ltd. release - under its new label Screen World - is now scheduled for November 14th (not October 24th). Screen Entertainment's release of Yûichi Onuma's The Manual 2: Intermediate Level (Jisatsu manyuaru 2: chûkyû-hen) - a.k.a. "The Suicide Manual 2: Intermediate Stage" - is still scheduled for December 26th.
As was previously reported here on ScreenAnarchy, The Manual opened at the Shibuya Ciné la Sept in Tokyo on October 6, 2003. The Manual 2: Intermediate Level was released directly to video in Japan on December 26, 2003. The Japanese official subsites for both movies are still online, and there are downloadable English-subtitled trailers (see the bottom of this article) for both movies on the website of Belle Equipe Y.K. (Y.K. Beru Ekippu).
The Manual and The Manual 2: Intermediate Level were based on Wataru Tsurumi's non-fiction book The Complete Manual of Suicide (Kanzen jisatsu manyuaru).
The principal cast of The Manual was as follows: Chisato Morishita, Kenji Mizuhashi, Hideo Sakaki, Yûko Nakamura, Ayaka Maeda, Nozomi Andô, and Kei Horie.
The principal cast of The Manual 2: Intermediate Level was as follows: Nozomi Andô, Masaru Matsuda, Yûko Nakamura, Yôichirô Saitô, Yûrei Yanagi, Yûko Daike, Mika Mifune, Katsuya Kobayashi, and Kanji Tsuda.
The Manual trailer (downloadable 9.0 MB MOV file)
The Manual 2: Intermediate Level trailer (downloadable 15.3 MB MOV file)
The Manual Japanese official subsite
The Manual 2: Intermediate Level Japanese official subsite