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TOKYO - With muggles in the audience and some new tricks up his sleeve, schoolboy wizard Harry Potter returns to cast his spell Thursday in a red-carpet premiere in Tokyo of his latest movie.
Japanese fans lucky enough to win a ticket for the show will be the first general viewers anywhere in the world to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," although Warner Brothers Entertainment says the gala world premiere will be in London on July 3.
"The Order of the Phoenix" is the fifth instalment of author J.K. Rowling's hit series of books, and is being released just weeks before the long-awaited seventh and final book is published.
Dozens of "Potterians" rushed to Tokyo's main airport Wednesday to welcome Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Potter, and who at the age of 17 is not quite the same baby-faced actor he was when he last visited five years ago.
Radcliffe, who had raised eyebrows by appearing naked in a London play this year, smiled and waved but walked on to avoid causing chaos at the airport. He is due to attend Thursday's showing.
"Fans who have watched him grow up through the movies yelped with surprise and astonishment to see how dignified he has turned out," a Japanese movie entertainment website, cinematoday.jp, reported.
The bespectacled wizard has charmed a wide range of muggles -- non-magical humans -- from children avid to join Harry's Dumbledore's Army to Guantanamo Bay inmates who are reportedly entranced with the Potter series.
The huge 150 million-dollar production follows Harry and his classmates Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger at the Hogwarts school as they face the evil Lord Voldemort, who has returned from the darkness.
Harry experiences his first romance, making a kiss scene a highlight of the film.
Radcliffe has admitted to an initial bout of nerves while filming the kiss scene, but "after the first few takes, it was fine and we finally started enjoying ourselves."
Katie Leung, who plays his schoolmate Cho Chang, said Radcliffe was a wizard when it comes to kissing.
"He was great," Leung said in London this week. "I'm sure everyone wants to know if he was a good kisser. He definitely was."
Director David Yates, who has built a career with television dramas, was tapped for the first time to shoot a film on Harry.
He said he was challenged to depict the boy wizard who in the book is meant to be 15 and struggling with his inner self and ego. Radcliffe himself will turn 18 next month.
The new Harry Potter flick is "more complicated and complex than the earlier films," Yates said in an interview with Japanese television.
"The key things of this movie are really about identity, about discovering who you are as a person, at that very difficult and often dramatic age between about 14 and 17," he said.
The film will hit cinemas around the world starting on July 11. It will go on general release in Japan on July 20.
It is the latest Hollywood film to have its world premiere in Japan, with "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" starring Johnny Depp also opening here before other countries. - AFP/ra
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