Release in Japan: June 2, 2012
Original Concept: Production I.G/CLAMP
Original Character Designer: CLAMP
Screenplay: Nanase Ohkawa (CLAMP), Junichi Fujisaku
Director: Naoyoshi Shiotani
Key Animation Supervisor: Kazuchika Kise
Animation Production: Production I.G
Presented by: Project BLOOD-C Movie
official website (Japanese only):
http://www.blood-c-movie.jp
© 2012 Production I.G, CLAMP / Project BLOOD-C Movie
Release in Japan: April 21, 2012
Director/Screenplay/Storyboard: Hiroyuki Okiura
Key Animation Supervisor: Masashi Ando
Background Art: Hiroshi Ono
Animation: Production I.G
official website (Japanese only):
http://momo-letter.jp/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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This week's Top Page is dedicated to Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort A Letter to Momo, coming to Japanese theaters April 2012.
A Letter to Momo is screening at the NYICFF 2012. Check the details here.
A Letter to Momo has also been selected for the AniFest 2012 festival in the Czech Republic. Check the details here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort A Letter to Momo, coming to Japanese theaters April 2012.
We would like to thank all the people around the world who are supporting Production I.G, and wish all of you a peaceful and prosperous 2012!
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort A Letter to Momo.
Read the second and last part of our interview with Ren Ishimori and Ryo Hirata, the two character designers of Oblivion Island here.
Kenji Kamiyama is working on a new feature film, 009 RE:CYBORG. Read the details here.
A Letter to Momo is screening in competition at Anilogue 2011. Check the details here.
A Letter to Momo is also screening at the Forum des images in Paris on December 4th. Check the details here.
A Letter to Momo is going to have its Middle East premiere at the 8th Dubai International Film Festival. Check the details here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort A Letter to Momo, now screening in Poland, Spain, USA, UK and Korea.
Kenji Kamiyama is working on a new feature film, 009 RE:CYBORG. Read the details here.
A Letter to Momo is having its European premiere at the 27th Warsaw International Film Festival. Check the details here.
A Letter to Momo is also screening at four more festivals in October: USA premiere at the 31st Hawaii International Film Festival (see details here), Official Fantastic Competition at Sitges 2011 (see details here), UK premiere in competition at the Scotland Loves Animation Festival here), and Asian premiere at the 16th Busan International Film Festival here).
Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror has been selected in competition at the and at 6th anim'est International Animation Film Festival in Bucharest. Check the details here.
Kazuchika Kise's directorial debut Drawer Hobs is screening in competition at Sitges 2011, Read the details here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort A Letter to Momo, having its world premiere at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival.
A Letter to Momo is screening in the official selection of Toronto 2011. Check the details here.
Shinsuke Sato's Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror was greeted with two awards at the 10th International Film Festival "Nueva Mirada" for Children and Youth in Buenos Aires. Read the details here.
Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror has also been selected in competition at the 7th World Animated Film Festival in Varna and at 6th anim'est International Animation Film Festival in Bucharest.
Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. - SSS 3D Optical Camouflage Camera app for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad is now available worldwide through App Store. Check the details here.
Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo has been selected for the official programme of the New York International Children's Film Festival 2012 (NYICFF 2012), to be held in New York, USA from March 2 to 25, 2012. The screening at NYICFF 2012 marks the movie's USA East Coast premiere.
NYICFF was founded in 1997 to promote intelligent, passionate, provocative cinematic works for ages 3-18 and to help define a more compelling film for kids. Since its launch, the event has grown to become the largest festival for children and teens in North America, with a paid audience of over 20,000 attending the most recent event. Since 2000, all screenings have sold out in advance.
"A Letter to Momo is a wonderfully expressive and beautifully hand drawn tale that combines bursts of whimsy and kinetic humor with deep felt emotion and drama. The animation is superb throughout, from the painstakingly rendered serenity of the island's Shinto shrines to the climactic finale - that is the best flight of supernatural fancy since Spirited Away." (NYICFF)
Screening schedule:
Date: March 3, 2012 (Sat)
Time: 11:00am
Place: IFC Center
Date: March 11, 2012 (Sun)
Time: 11:00am
Place: IFC Center
Date: March 24, 2012 (Sun)
Time: 2:30pm
Place: Asia Society
NYICFF 2012 official website:
http://www.gkids.com/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo is one of the four feature films selected in the International Competition of Feature-length Animated Films at the 11th AniFest (AniFest 2012), to be held in Teplice, Czech Republic from April 26 to May 1, 2012. The screening at AniFest 2012 marks the movie's Czech premiere.
Established in 2002, AniFest is a specialized competition festival of animated production for film professionals, artists and animation lovers that builds on the famous tradition of Czech animated film and offers a unique opportunity to become familiar with the best of contemporary world and Czech animation work. The festival attracts more than 20,000 people every year.
Screening schedule:
TBA
AniFest 2012 official website:
http://www.anifest.cz/2012/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in the forthcoming Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.
Check our Blood-C: The Last Dark info page here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in the forthcoming Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.
A Letter to Momo was awarded Excellence Prize at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival. Read the details here.
Check our newly added Blood-C: The Last Dark page here.
Read the second and last part of our interview with Ren Ishimori and Ryo Hirata, the two character designers of Oblivion Island here.
Kenji Kamiyama is working on a new feature film, 009 RE:CYBORG. Read the details here.
A Letter to Momo is going to have its Middle East premiere at the 8th Dubai International Film Festival. Check the details here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Briareos, the Hekatonchires-class cyborg as seen in Appleseed XIII.
Check our Appleseed XIII info page here.
This week's Top Page is dedicated to Deunan Knute, the heroine in the forthcoming double feature film Appleseed XIII.
Check the newly added info page of Appleseed XIII: Tartaros here.
Oblivion Island received the jury's Special Mention at the 18th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Films. Read the details here.
Read the first part of our interview with Ren Ishimori and Ryo Hirata, the two character designers of Oblivion Island here.
Hiroyuki Okiura's second feature film, A Letter to Momo was awarded with the Excellence Prize in the Animation Division of the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival (2011).
Thirteen Production I.G works received recognitions in the past editions. In 2000, Blood: The Last Vampire (director: Hiroyuki Kitakubo) was awarded with the Animation Division Grand Prize, and in 2002, Episode 2 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (director: Kenji Kamiyama) received the Excellence Prize in the same category. In 2004, both Innocence (director: Mamoru Oshii) and Otogi Zoshi (director: Mizuho Nishikubo) were nominated Jury Recommended Works, and so were Junichi Fujisaku's TV series Blood+ and Kenji Kamiyama's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The Laughing Man in 2005. In the 10th edition, I.G was double awarded with Solid State Society (Jury Recommended Work, Animation Division) and the bisque doll reproducing D'Eon de Beaumont (from Kazuhiro Furuhashi's TV series Le Chevalier D'Eon), appointed Jury Recommended Work in the Entertainment Division. In the 11th edition, Kenji Kamiyama was greeted with two Jury Recommended Work recognitions for Solid State Society (for the second consecutive year) and Guardian of the Spirit. In 2008, Mamoru Oshii's The Sky Crawlers was nominated Jury Recommended Work along with Naoyoshi Shiotani's Tokyo Marble Chocolate. In 2009, Shinsuke Sato's feature film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror and Kenji Kamiyama's Eden of the East were nominated Jury Recommended Works.
Started in 1997, the Japan Media Arts Festival is a "Contest" that praises creative media art works utilizing the latest expression technology, and it is also a "Festival" that supports creative activity and broadly presents various art works. At the same time, the event is promoting the development of media arts in Japan by providing the opportunities of appreciation, such as Exhibitions and Sanctioned Events.
Japan Media Arts Festival official website (English available):
http://plaza.bunka.go.jp/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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Overview
Feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark is the new chapter from the world-famous Blood: The Last Vampire saga that started in 2000 and now one of animation house Production I.G's flagship titles.
Blood-C: The Last Dark is a creative collaboration between Production I.G and popular all-female artist group CLAMP, supervised by Junichi Fujisaku, one of the key members of the team that developed the original concept for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and who later directed the TV series Blood+ (2005).
Like the former chapters of the saga, Blood-C: The Last Dark features a heroine called Saya who slays vicious creatures with a Japanese sword, but with totally new designs and an unpredictable story twist.
Directed byProduction I.G's enfant terrible, Naoyoshi Shiotani, Blood-C: The Last Dark is slated in Japan for June 2, 2012.
Story
Tokyo, winter.
Following the enforcement of the new Youth Protection Ordinance, minors are forbidden to circulate in the streets at night and the use of the Internet is regulated. However, young people continue to fight for their own freedom through underground methods.
A group called Sirrut, in particular, has declared war on Fumito Nanahara, a man whose great influence at both political and economic level has virtually made him the ruler of Tokyo.
The Sirrut fight their war with the weapon they know best: Internet. And while searching for more information about their enemy in the cyberspace, they come across a number of urban legends referring to the existence of the "Tower," a mysterious organization behind Fumito that is rumored to be conducting experiments involving human beings, and alluding to people being... eaten.
Determined to expose the truth, the Sirrut members start investigating. But as they are in the subway following a lead, a monstrous creature appeared from nowhere starts attacking the passengers. As panic and mayhem spread, one girl stands firmly in front of that living nightmare, a Japanese sword in her hand, her eyes as cold as ice...
About Blood
Theatrically released in 2000, Blood: The Last Vampire was Japan's first fully digital animated film, and also Production I.G's first and highly successful attempt to create a project based on a fully in-house developed original concept. A dream team including Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Junichi Fujisaku (Blood+) and Kenji Kamiyama (Eden of the East) assembled for this purpose. The movie featured Saya, a teenage girl in school uniform slashing metamorphic monsters with a Japanese sword -a unique concept contributed by Junichi Fujisaku. Combining this powerful heroine with stunningly cutting-edge animation, Blood: The Last Vampire has been mesmerizing moviegoers and renowned creators alike all over the world, starting from James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino. The character of Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was reportedly inspired by Saya. In 2005, I.G expanded the movie's concept with Blood+ -a 50-episode TV series directed by Junichi Fujisaku, which reached out to a wider market. The Blood franchise includes comic adaptations, novels, and videogames. In 2009, a live-action remake directed by Chris Nahon, starring Gianna Jun (Jun Ji-hyun) and produced by Pathé was released worldwide.
About CLAMP
Debuting in 1987 with RG Veda, CLAMP is an all-female Japanese comic artist group consisting of Nanase Okawa, who provides the storyline and screenplay, and three artists whose roles shift for each series: Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi. As of today, over 100 million CLAMP comic volumes have been sold worldwide. Their works include, X (1992), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993), Cardcaptor Sakura (1996), xxxHOLiC (2002-2011, over 11 million copies sold in Japan alone, #6 best-selling manga in USA according to New York Times in 2009), Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (2003~2009, over 20 million copies in Japan alone, #5 best-selling book on Waldenbooks' list in 2004). CLAMP comics and their animated adaptations are released in many countries and have gained the artists a huge fan base on global scale.
About Naoyoshi Shiotani
Born in 1977, Shiotani is one of Japan's most promising young animation creators. His early works include TV series Windy Tales (key animation supervisor, 2004) and Blood+ (2005), for which he also directed the kaleidoscopic third opening film, Colors of the Heart (check our special feature here), selected in competition for the 11th Holland Animation Film Festival. His directorial debut, Tokyo Marble Chocolate (2007) was awarded with the Grand Prize in the Feature Films Section of SICAF 2008. His talent was confirmed in Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (2009) a CGI movie for which Shiotani contributed storyboard and animation direction, that eventually won ten awards in Japan and at international film festivals around the world. Shiotani joined Production I.G in the days when Blood: The Last Vampire was being completed, and apprenticed under Kazuchika Kise, chief animator for the movie. With Blood-C: The Last Dark, Shiotani has solemnly promised he won't disappoint his master.
official website (Japanese only):
http://www.blood-c-movie.jp
© 2012 Production I.G, CLAMP / Project BLOOD-C TV Movie
Original Concept:
Production I.G/CLAMP
Original Character Designer:
CLAMP
Screenplay:
Nanase Ohkawa (CLAMP), Junichi Fujisaku
Director:
Naoyoshi Shiotani
Animation Character Designer:
Kazuchika Kise
Key Animation Supervisor:
Kazuchika Kise
Animation Production:
Production I.G
Saya:
Nana Mizuki
Fumito Nanahara:
Kenji Nojima
Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo is part of the official selection of the 8th Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF 2011), to be held in Dubai, UEA, from December 7 to 14, 2011. The film will be screening in the Cinema of AsiaAfrica section as a Middle East premiere.
Since its first edition in 2004, DIFF has established itself as an important cultural event in Dubai and the UAE, with the purpose of celebrating excellence in cinema, using it as a medium to promote open dialogue between cultures and nations.
Screening schedule:
Date: December 9, 2011 (Fri)
Time: 15:00
Place: Mall of the Emirates 2
Date: December 12, 2011 (Mon)
Time: 12:00
Place: Mall of the Emirates 12
DIFF 2011 official website:
http://www.dubaifilmfest.com/index.php/en/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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Hiroyuki Okiura's highly anticipated second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo is screening in the feature film competition of the 9th Anilogue International Animation Film Festival (Anilogue 2011), to be held in Budapest, Hungary and Vienna, Austria from November 23rd to 30th, 2011.
Started in 2003 as Anifest in Hungary only, the festival was renamed Anilogue since 2008 as it begun to be held in both Budapest and Vienna, and it is now standing as a major animation event in central Europe. The competitive section for feature films has been introduced from this edition.
Screening schedule:
Date: November 25, 2011 (Fri)
Time: 21:00
Place: Topkino, Grosser Saal (Vienna)
Date: November 26, 2011 (Sat)
Time: 19:00
Place: Uránia National Film Palace, Grand Hall (Budapest)
Anilogue 2011 official website:
http://www.anilogue.com/
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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PART 2
Which character was the hardest to make?
Ishimori: For me it was Teo. He was the first I started working on, but I had a very vague idea of how he was going to interact with the other characters on the island, and I could not find a good balance. But the greatest hurdle was probably the fact that he had to be kind of cute, and designing cute characters is not exactly my forte. I tend to design weird stuff, you know. When I came up with the first design of Teo, they told me, that's too creepy, do something about it! (lol)
Hirata: I remember that design. He was kind of taller and more adult-looking.
Ishimori: To me it looked cute enough in his own way, but apparently director Sato was looking for a different image. We, Sato-san and Shiotani-san went back and forth on Teo for a while, and I have to say that the final result was very well balanced with Haruka.
On the opposite, I could almost do whatever I wanted with the bad guys!
What about the human characters? I've heard that Hirata-san had a hard time finding the right Haruka, am I right?
Hirata: How do you know? (lol) For Haruka alone I made something like a hundred different design proposals. I drew all possible different variations, such as make her look one year older or younger than the age we established, 16. Haruka was a complex character with so many features and restrictions. She had to be cute at first glance, but also the kind of girl capable of action, and so on. So I made her with short hair and slightly tanned, to emphasize outdoor activity. By contrast, her friend Miho is more an indoor type of girl, so I made her paler. Haruka's school uniform is a mix of existing uniforms designs, and I was careful not to make it look unfashionable from real teenage girls' point of view. I had to study over an embarrassing amount of mags about high school girls, and by the time I had become an expert! (lol)
Any point you dedicated specific attention to?
Hirata: I wanted the audience to relate with this basically cheerful and positive girl, who has this small but persistent shadow lingering somewhere in her heart, and who does not get along with her father too well recently. On the opposite, initially Haruka's father looks somehow distant and uncaring. This is how he looks to her, and therefore he must look so to the viewers too. But as the story progresses, Haruka re-discover his true feelings. Therefore, I wanted the father's design to reflect these layered features.
Ishimori: Also the balance between Haruka and the islanders was very important. For example, since white was the basic tone in Haruka's uniform, we avoided using that colour for the islanders, with the Baron being the only exception, in order to emphasize Haruka's pureness.
What made you happier in getting involved with this project?
Hirata: My job started from drawing with pencil on paper, developed through clay modeling, to be eventually translated into information inside a hard disk. When I saw the complete movie, imagining all the process my piece of paper went through and the work contributed by so many other people, I felt a kind of fulfillment that could hardly be expressed with words.
Ishimori: I realized that Sato-san and Shiotani-san really liked what I did for them. But I want you to see all the intricate details we put into every character, every scene and in the background art, sometimes appearing on screen only for few seconds.
(2 - end)
© 2009 FUJI TELEVISION NETWORK / Production I.G / DENTSU / PONY CANYON
Hiroyuki Okiura's feature film A Letter to Momo is screening as the closing night's special movie at the animation film festival Carrefour de l'animation, held in Paris from December 1st through 4th at the prestigious Forum des Images.
Screening schedule:
Date: December 4, 2011 (Sun)
Time: 20:30
Place: Salle 500
official website:
http://www.forumdesimages.fr/fdi/Festivals-et-evenements/Carrefour-de-l-animation/(offset)/30
© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners
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Release in Japan: October 24, 2011
Format: 1 x 85'
Original Story: Shirow Masamune
Screenplay: Junichi Fujisaku
Director: Takayuki Hamana
Original Character Design: Shirow Masamune
Character Design: Takayuki Goto
Mechanical Design: Atsushi Takeuchi
CG Director: Akihito Watanabe
Art Director: Masanobu Nomura
Music: Conisch
Animation Production: Jinni's Animation Studio and Production I.G
Presented by
"APPLESEED XIII" Production Committee
official website (Japanese only):
http://www.appleseed13.jp/
© 2011 Shirow Masamune / Seishinsha - APPLESEED XIII Project