Author: kotatsufestival

We have a special message from Yasuhiro Yoshiura, the director of “Patema Inverted“. “Patema Inverted (Sakasama no Patema)” appeals to people globally, whatever their language and culture, whether they are devout fans of animation or not.

I very much hope that everyone who visits Kotatsu Japanese Animation Film Festival 2014 thoroughly enjoys the first Welsh showing of this film.

Message translated by Midori Matsui

We are very much looking forward to a screening of “Patema Inverted“.

Colorful is a 2010 anime directed by Keiichi Hara. It won the award for Excellent Animation of the Year at the 34^th Japan Academy Prize. It was on the recent 11^th Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Synopsis

A dejected soul reaches the train station to death but is informed that he is ‘lucky’ and will have another chance at life. The soul is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide but for a limited time in which the soul must discover why Makoto committed suicide and what the soul’s biggest sin in life was.

Mai Mai Miracle gets a theatrical screening after a highly successful Kickstarter Campaign. Directed by Sunao Katabuchi (assistant director of Kiki’s Delivery Service) and produced by MADHOUSE in 2009, when it was first released it won a slew of awards including Best Animated Film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal along with the Excellence Prize for Feature Length Animation at the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Synopsis

Shinko, is a third grade elementary school student with a magically active imagination. She spends a lot of her time listening to her grandfather’s history lessons, imagining what her town was like 1,000 years earlier. One day, a sad and sombre girl called Kiiko transfers to Shinko’s school from Tokyo. A strong friendship soon grows between the two girls as Shinko helps Kiiko come out of her shell and deal with her loss – all thanks to their adventures, both imagined and real.

Patema Inverted is the latest directorial effort from Yasuhiro Yoshiura, director of Time of Eve and Pale Cocoon OVA. The film was previously shown at the 2013 Scotland Loves Anime Festival, where it won the Audience and Judge awards. It was also nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at 2013’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The official synopsis is as follows:

Synopsis

Patema has lived her whole life underground. Following a catastrophic attempt to harness alternative power sources, her community were driven to settle in a dark, cramped network of tunnels below ground. She roams them by torchlight, dreaming of adventures on the surface. Age does not fit in comfortably in school or society as a whole. The world he lives in is known as ‘Aiga’, controlled by the tyrant Izamura’s family for generations. The city at the centre of the kingdom is dominated by a massive ‘Control Tower’ with a vast wasteland lurking on the horizon. Together – the pair are about to be pulled into something much bigger that will turn their worlds on their heads…

This is the third of Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild of Evangelion and the story takes a darkly psychological turn.

Synopsis

Fourteen years after the third impact, Shinji awakens to a world that is in ruins and former allies turned against him as Nerv has ceased to exist. He does not know what happened. He is now Trapped in a harrowing cycle of death and rebirth, and an ongoing battle against the angels – even as the world spirals down towards what could be a tragic end.

We are also holding a special screening of By Your Side. This film was the collaboration of Tsuneo Goda, the creator of Domo and the singer Sade, created through the project called Zapuni.

Zapuni unites Japanese visual artists with world-renowned musicians to create and dedicate videos to charities that help children affected by the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Japan with the power of music.