Category: Festival News

Short Peace is a compilation film featuring four anime shorts directed and written by four people including Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of cyberpunk classic Akira and Shuhei Morita, director of the TV anime Tokyo Ghoul. Tsukumo, under the title Possessions, and was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 86th Academy Awards in 2014.

Synopsis

The central theme of this film is Japan and there are four stories about Japan at different points in the nation’s history:

Possessions, Shuhei Morita’s award-winning tale of a lone traveller deep in the mountains who disturbs spirits in an abandoned shrine.

Combustible is a story of love, honour and firefighting in Edo directed by Katsuhiro Otomo.

Gambo directed by Hiroaki Ando is about a legendary battle takes place between a mysterious white bear defending the royal family from a monstrous red demon.

A Farewell to Weapons shows a group of soldiers battle robotic tanks in an apocalyptic Tokyo.

Seven years in the making, this is the latest award-winning film from Hiroyuki Okiura and Production I.G a partnership that brought the world the critically acclaimed sci-fi epic Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

“A Letter to Momo”

Synopsis

Following the death of her father, a young girl comes into contact with three yokai (goblins) who help her overcome the sadness of her loss.

“Tiger & Bunny the Rising”

See what happens right after the events of the successful TV anime Tiger and Bunny in a new and exciting adventure. People new to the series need know nothing about what has happened previously.

Synopsis

Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brooks Jr have their partnership severed by the new owner of Apollon media. Barnaby must work with his newly assigned partner Golden Ryan but the threat facing Sternbild City is so serious that Wild Tiger will be called upon to help.

“Perfect Blue”

Watch the debut film of Satoshi Kon, a man who would push the boundaries of anime with ark psychological stories such as Millennium Actress (2001), Paranoia Agent (2004) and Paprika (2006).

Synopsis

A former pop-idol turned actress finds her sense of reality falling apart when a stalker enters her life and the ghost of her former career haunts her.

“Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise”

The Wings of Honneamise was the first commercial project created by legendary anime studio Gainax that has become what many anime fans regard as a classic.

Synopsis

Aimless astronaut candidate Shirotsugh Lhadatt finds himself inspired to reach for the stars after a chance meeting with a young woman but with his nation on the verge of war he finds himself in a race against time to leave the earth.

Chapter

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Aberystwyth Arts Centre

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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.