Welcome to the first of three trailer posts
There are a lot of Japanese films released this weekend!
I haven’t had the time to write anything new that I want to publish on my blog apart from these trailer posts. The festival work I do has ramped up and I’m enjoying doing that. It helps that the 3DS game Bravely Default is low commitment and on a console I can slip into standby mode easily.
What are the first batch of films?
Silent Love 
サイレントラブ 「Sairento Rabu」
Release Date: January 26th, 2024
Duration: 116 mins.
Director: Eiji Uchida
Writer: Eiji Uchida (Screenplay),
Starring: Ryosuke Yamada, Minami Hamabe,
Website Twitter: @SilentloveMovie JFDB IMDB
Eiji Uchida has come a long way from indie movies like Greatful Dead, especially with the hit movie Midnight Swan. He has created his own original story with this romance with music by Ghibli/Kitano maestro Joe Hisaishi.
Synopsis: Aoi stopped speaking after an incident and lives a dull life. However, when he a fateful encounter with an aspiring pianist named Mika, things change. She lost her vision in an accident and feels despair over her situation and feels the need to protect her. His way of conveying his feelings is through touching her with his index finger and the sound of a gamelan ball. Slowly, Mika begins to feel love but fate has other things waiting in store for them…
Love You as the World Ends FINAL 
劇場版 君と世界が終わる日に FINAL 「Gekijoban Kimi to Sekai ga Owaru Hi ni FINAL」
Release Date: January 26th, 2024
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Shintaro Sugawara
Writer: Kentaro Ushio (Screenplay),
Starring: Ryoma Takeuchi, Fumiya Takahashi, Mayu Hotta, Rihito Itagaki, Airu Kubozuka,
Website Twitter: @kimiseka_ntv IMDB
Akiko Nogi (I Am a Hero, Library Wars) Nobuhiro Yamashita (Hard-Core, The Drudgery Train)
Synopsis: This is the movie finale of the zombie survival TV series and the main characters are looking for a place called “Utopia,” which is reputed to be the last holdout for humanity. The place is run by an elite who are working on a vaccine that could save everyone but run the place with an iron fist from a tower. One of the characters has antibodies that protect against the zombie virus and she is a research subject that the other characters try to save by breaking into the tower.
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed FREEDOM 
傷物語 こよみヴァンプ 「 Kido Senshi Gundam Seed FREEDOM 」
Release Date: January 26th, 2024
Duration: 124 mins
Director: Mitsuo Fukuda
Writer: Chiaki Morosawa, Liu Goto, Mitsuo Fukuda (Screenplay), Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino (Original Creator)
Starring: Akira Ishida (Athrun Zala), Kenichi Suzumura (Shinn Asuka), Nanako Mori (Cagalli Yula Athha), Rie Tanaka (Lacus Clyne), Win Morisaki (Griffin Arbalest), Maaya Sakamoto (Lunamaria Hawke),
Animation Production: Square Enix Visual Works
Website Twitter: @SEED_HDRP ANN MAL
Three TV movies complied from Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED series.
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映画への期待コメントや #ガンダムSEED おすすめポイントを投稿しよう
抽選で豪華プレゼントも
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— 機動戦士ガンダムSEEDシリーズ (@SEED_HDRP) January 18, 2024
Synopsis: In the 75th year of C.E. (Cosmic Era), Kira Yamato and his team from the peace keeping group “Compass” find themselves enlisted to strike at the heart of the Blue Cosmos, a group calling for the elimination of the Coordinators (genetically enhanced humans – Kira is one of them). They do this just as war between Earth and various independence movements grinds on.
Songs of Kamui 
カムイのうた 「Kamui no Uta」
Release Date: January 26th, 2024
Duration: 126 mins.
Director: Hiroshi Sugawara
Writer: Hiroshi Sugawara (Screenplay),
Starring: Mizuki Yoshida, Ayumu Mochizuki, Kaho Shimada, Misa Shimizu, Masaya Kato,
This one sounds interesting, a film based on the life of Yukie Chiri, an Ainu girl who translated and transcribed into Japanese “Kamui Yukar”, an epic Ainu poem passed down orally among Ainu tribes since they have no writing system. Yukar means oral poem.
Highly intelligent, though she was, Yukie was rejected from schools due to being of Ainu descent but she beat the odds and moved to Tokyo to make the first book of Ainu folklore put into print by a member of the ethnic group. Unfortunately, she died suddenly at the age 19, just months before it would be published. Last year was the 100th anniversary of its publication.
You know what? For more (and better) information, visit the Asahi news website
Synopsis: It is the Taisho period and Teru is an Ainu girl living in Hokkaido. She years to go to school with other girls but discrimination means she is rejected despite passing every test. She manages to get into one place and becomes the first Ainu student to enter a vocational education institute for women but is looked down upon as a “savage” there. A fateful meeting with an Ainu language researcher from Tokyo sets Teru on the path of recording the oral legends of her people through transcribing the pronunciations of Ainu words in the oral literature into Romanized characters and then translated them into Japanese. This gives Teru the chance to prove her brilliance and rewrite the fate of the Ainu.
Colourful Witch: Eiko Kadono’s Life From Where Stories Are Born 
カラフルな魔女 角野栄子の物語が生まれる暮らし 「Karafuru na Majou ~ Kadono Eiko no Monogatari ga Umareru Kurashi ~ 」
Release Date: January 26th, 2024
Duration: 96 mins.
Director: Marina Miyagawa
Writer: N/A
Starring: Eiko Kadono, Aoi Miyazaki (Narration),
Synopsis: A documentary that follows the daily life of Eiko Kadono, the Hans Christian Andersen Award-winning children’s book author famous for having written Majo no Takkyūbin over a period of four years. Her book would be adapted by Hayao Miyazaki into Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989).
Her life and the level of her determination sounds amazing considering she lost her mother at an early age, lived in different parts of the world, and more and she still keeps a happy colourful presence in the world.
The documentary is based on a program of the same title that was broadcast on NHK E-television.