October 24, 2008

Takashi Miike's VFX TV series Phone Braver 7 was awarded Best Drama in the Kids & Youth Category of the International Drama Festival in TOKYO. The award ceremony took place at the Meiji Kinenkan in Tokyo on October 22, 2008.
Phone Braver 7 has been selected in competition for the forthcoming 12th Holland Animation Film Festival and for the first edition of Siggraph Asia, but this is the first Japanese domestic recognition.

Started airing on TV Tokyo in April 2008 as a 51-episode TV show, Phone Braver 7 revolves around high-school student Keita Amishima and his encounter with a sentient mobile phone (fully 3DCG-generated) that can walk on its own legs, and is connected with a secret anti-cybercrime agency called Under Anchor. Phone Brave 7 has attracted great attention for its stellar director line-up, starting from Takashi Miike and including big names such as Mamoru Oshii, Shusuke Kaneko and Pokemon-famed Kunihiko Yuyama as episode directors. Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) also joined the production by directing the second opening film of the series.

Started in 2007, the International Drama Festival in TOKYO is an official event of JAPAN International Contents Festival (CoFesta). One of the important purposes of the festival is "to distribute Japanese broadcast contents overseas." The quality of Japanese TV dramas as entertainment is high and never inferior to European and other Asian countries' programs. International Drama Festival in TOKYO is a mean of improving international competitiveness and profitability of Japanese productions. While there are many awards focus on "artistry," the International Drama Festival intends to offer awards that put more emphasis on commercial potential, which none of the existing awards evaluate.

IDF official website (Japanese and English)
http://nab.or.jp/drafes/index.html

© WiZ·Production I.G·Buddy Mobile Project LLP/TV TOKYO