Scotland Loves Anime 2024

Now in its 15th year, this November Scotland Loves Anime returned to Glasgow and Edinburgh, while also adding a new date in London (because London loves anime too!), bringing across the latest and greatest anime films to grace Japanese cinemas over the past 12 months. As always, the Anime UK News team were there, eager to bring you the low-down on this year’s slate, which included Naoko Yamada’s latest film, The Colors Within, the adaptation of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s memoir, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, and director Popreq’s ode to creators everywhere, A Few Moments of Cheers.

Read on as we take you through the highs and lows of this year’s festival!

Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

In Competition – Jury Award Winner

Onosume

Having watched some Japanese TV, I was already pretty familiar with TV chat show host and actress Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, a woman who is absolutely unmistakable whenever she is on screen, thanks to her unique hairstyle! However, I never really knew much about her as a person apart from that she’s a very popular TV personality.

This film, which adapts her autobiographical memoir, offers a fascinating window into her early years, that allows you to not only see exactly where she’s come from, but understand the historical context around being a neurodivergent child growing up against the backdrop of the Second World War.

We’re introduced to Tetsuko, who goes by her nickname “Totto-chan”, as a very hyperactive and unfocussed girl, who is being kicked out of her school for being disruptive. Her mother ends up enrolling her into Tomoe Gakuen, a unique and radical place of learning for the time. To Tetsuko’s delight, the school’s classrooms are train carriages, while there’s no strict lessons and learning is free form, where the kids are allowed to tackle their work in any order they choose. Here Tetsuko flourishes and quickly makes a bunch of friends, particularly becoming close with a boy who has polio. Yet her peaceful new school life doesn’t last long as the war kicks into full gear and slowly transforms her life both at home and at school.

Personally, I thought this film was a delight to watch where, despite being set in one of the darkest moments of history, it is still bright and filled with moments of wonder. There were some inevitable comparisons with Grave of the Fireflies around its showing of the effects of the war, particularly with a certain scene towards the end of the film, but unlike Takahata’s heart-shattering masterpiece of telling how war sucks, I’d happily watch this film multiple times for how well it defines its characters and makes them shine. The war stuff is more subtle and slowly encroaches on us until the film deals with the struggles Tetsuko and her friends and family have to go through in its latter stages, for the most part instead choosing to focus on her life at this special educational needs school and her close friendship with one of her classmates who has polio.

I think this approach works well as it allows you to really connect with the cast and gives you a chance to really understand them as people rather than it just being a showcase of suffering. It’s interesting that there’s a greater emphasis placed on Tetsuko’s classmates and her seeing into their hearts and treating them as equals.  There are some very distinct personalities in her class and the film really does it’s best to show them at their best, although you can’t get away from Tetsuko being the main draw. She’s an addictive bundle of energy, always inquisitive, never judging, and a non-stop talker, and her energy just screams through the screen.

It’s a fantastic looking film too with brilliant art direction. It’s bright, colourful and soft in tone and really works best in scenes where it is trying to bring out Tetsuko’s personality to the full. Then there’s this interesting transition from light to dark as the war sets in, with more night-time scenes slotted in as you slowly realise, “oh, ohh, it’s heading towards this, okay!”. And then when the emotional beats hit, you really feel it in your gut.

Honestly, it’s just a fascinating and very well put-together film that does everything it needs to do in shining a light on Kuroyanagi’s childhood while giving us a glimpse into wartime life in Japan that is moving and effective, but by no means as depressing as some other films that have tackled the same moments in history.

The Colors Within

In Competition

Onosume

Out of all the films at this year’s festival, Naoko Yamada’s latest film, The Colors Within, was the one I was looking forward to the most. I love a lot of her previous work from her time at Kyoto Animation and this is really her first major theatrical work since she moved over to Science Saru.

Set in a quaint Japanese port town (which is clearly based off Nagasaki), the film follows Totsuko Higurashi, a high school girl at a Catholic boarding school who has synesthesia and perceives people as different colours. One of her classmates, Kimi Sakunaga, has a really calming blue colour, and Totsuko becomes fascinated by this to the point of distraction, putting the two on a direct collision course. After a certain incident, Kimi disappears and Totsuko learns she’s dropped out of school. Tracking her down to a used bookstore, Totsuko is determined to establish a lasting friendship with her, and just by chance is roped into forming a band with Kimi and budding musician Rui, who also takes an interest in Kimi when he hears her play her guitar in the store. The film explores how their friendship grows and how it affects them in overcoming challenges in their home lives as they struggle to blossom into young adults.

I was right to anticipate this one as a good film as my word, it’s a load of fun, and I think I smiled and laughed through the film for the entire runtime. While it is sort of a coming-of-age story, there’s a lot more it holds in common with K-On! than Yamada’s directorial works that have more of an emotional impact, like A Silent Voice, but in that sense it’s very on-brand for her, taking her back to her TV days of working on slice-of-life comedies.

It’s really about a group of dumb kids that somehow come together, form a band, and just have a blast jamming together to escape from the more difficult aspects of their lives. This makes for a very entertaining film as you laugh along at their crazy teenage hijinks, but on the flipside, it does lack emotional depth. Moments of conflict that were maybe meant to be bigger talking points are quite shallow and poorly explored, meaning that characters are quite flat and don’t grow a whole lot through the film. In that sense I think you have to keep in mind what you’re coming into this for, but if you just want a good time, then it delivers in spades.

I really liked the look of the film, and it has that typical Yamada style and uses cues you might be familiar with from her other works, particularly in its use of colour, and that shooting something across a blank screen effect that I seem to remember from both K-On and A Silent Voice.

The most interesting thing for me personally though was the music, with composer and music director Kensuke Ushio firing on all cylinders here as the film has a fantastic score and some spectacular insert songs. One of the songs that the trio creates in the film, based on a little ditty Totsuko comes up with when trying to hide the fact she’s making music from her teachers, is super catchy and really leaves a lasting impression.

The Glasgow screening of this film had an interview with both Yamada and Ushio and it revealed some fascinating details about the film, which I won’t go into too much detail here to avoid spoilers, but went over things how the characters are represented by the three primary colours of light, and how this had its own effect on the music in creating the characters’ images. Hearing about the location search was also interesting and having been to Nagasaki myself last year, I did recognise a lot, like the trams, the architecture and just the general vibe of the place. So I’d have to say they’ve captured it very well on screen.

Overall though while I think this is definitely not Yamada’s strongest film (an accolade that I think goes to A Silent Voice) this is still a very fun time and one I’m sure you’ll enjoy if you’re coming into it with the right expectations.

Rui

I can’t add much to Onosume’s summary as I agree with every word, but when I initially sat down to watch The Colors Within I felt cautious; A Silent Voice was an instant classic but there’s always an anxiety around whether a skilled director can keep producing fresh, endearing works. I needn’t have worried. The Colors Within was entertaining from start to finish, dragging me into its story and completely winning me over.

My partner complained that several plot threads were mentioned and never fully explained but personally, I felt that was one of the movie’s strengths; it kept its focus on its main themes throughout, with filling in the blanks left as an exercise for the viewer. It made the world feel lived-in and the characters’ lives feel realistically complicated. There’s easily enough background content to fill out an entire television series about the characters’ interpersonal relationships (with one another and the wider cast) but that wasn’t the story that was being told.

Of particular note for me was the setting, which heavily involves a Catholic boarding school. It’s rare to see the softer side of Catholicism accurately represented in anime – or the media in general – and as someone who grew up surrounded by the prayers and imagery mentioned in the film, I was surprised by how much work had been put into weaving so much detail into the film (both as part of the plot and in the background). I could almost smell the incense and hear the squeaks of the pews from my childhood; while it’s not an era I want to revisit in person, seeing it all depicted so respectfully in another time and place was fascinating.

The Colors Within painted a beautiful picture of another world and let me visit for its runtime. It’s goofy, it’s heart-warming and it’s so very earnest; even a grumpy old fan like me couldn’t help but want to cheer for the main character and her friends.

Ghost Cat Anzu

In Competition

Onosume

Perhaps one of the more unique films at the festival, Ghost Cat Anzu is a French-Japanese co-production adapting Takashi Imashiro’s short-lived manga about an anthropomorphic cat that resides in a temple out in the countryside.

The film is told through the eyes of Karin, who is unceremoniously dumped on the doorstep of her grandfather’s temple after her father ends up in a load of debt he owes to loan sharks. While her father goes back home to Tokyo to sort things out, she is left in the care of her grandfather and the titular ghost cat. However, Karin still misses her mother who passed away several years ago, and although she doesn’t want to admit it, actually feels pretty lonely. So when her father misses the deadline to come back for her in time for the anniversary of her mother’s death, the frustrated Karin decides to take matters into her own hands.

On my first viewing of this one in Glasgow, I really enjoyed it, as it comes off as fun and comedic adventure, but given a second viewing I saw a lot more of its flaws as it tries to travel down two very separate paths that don’t come together quite as well as you’d hope.

The first half of the film is probably its strongest, as it focuses on Karin acclimatising to her new life in the countryside, getting to know Anzu and all the local characters. Here it plays out like a slice-of-life comedy, relying a lot on the gap of having really surreal things happen but all the characters treating them as an everyday occurrence. This makes for some really funny moments, like early on in the film where Anzu is pulled over for traffic law violations, and it’s clear that this giant cat ghost is the butt of all jokes.

For those of you who don’t like more infantile and bodily humour it may not go down so well, as with the film being clearly aimed at a younger audience, it has a lot of fart jokes, and at one point makes a joke out of Anzu being an animal and peeing in flowerbeds. But if you can get past that kid-friendly barrier, it does have a lot of heart to what it’s trying to portray, which comes across in many of the side characters, like the two boys or the collection of gods we meet later on, as while at first they may appear weird or confrontational, they warm up to be a bunch of good folks.

The second half of the film however upends itself and takes on this crazy road trip adventure as Karin tries to pay her respects to her mother. This leads us to a plot point where Karin can’t visit her mother’s grave in the columbarium because her father hasn’t been paying the fees for the plot in the building, but with the intervention of the god of poverty, this escalates into going to hell to see her mother, which of course you must never, ever do, or you’ll anger all the demons that live there!

I won’t spoil what happens next but it is a crazy ride and fun to watch but is such a shift in tone from what came before it’s like you’re watching a different film. I have heard this is a faithful adaptation of the manga, so this is more down to the manga having to end so soon and having to end it somewhere. When I was discussing this with friends after the screening, there was a general consensus that this would have worked better as a TV series, as you could have had this as the final couple of episodes to finish things off, but for the most part it would have been episodic slice-of-life hijinks.

There are a lot of holes that could have been explored for either part too, and there is a lot at its conclusion that is unsaid and left either unclear or up to the audience’s interpretation. While this can be an intentional choice it just leaves you confused about how certain things in the story work, particularly when you don’t have the full cultural context of what is going on. I’m neither Buddhist nor Japanese, so I found the scenes in hell difficult to understand, with my only knowledge coming through artwork I have seen in depicting how hell works in Buddhism.

Production-wise the film is pretty interesting though, as it was shot as live and rotoscoped, while the voice acting and sound effects are live recordings. Things have been transferred over relatively well with bright and colourful visuals and pretty smooth animation, but the audio quality does suffer a bit, and it can sometimes be difficult to make out exactly what is being said early on.

Overall, despite its flaws, this is an enjoyable film to watch and works really well as a family anime movie. If you’re an anime fan with younger kids, then this will be a perfect option if you’re wondering what to keep an eye on!

Trapezium

In Competition

Onosume

I had been warned before going into Trapezium that it had been very divisive from its earlier US screening, yet I don’t think I was prepared for how much I’d a) hate and b) like this film because wow this redefines the word wicked in so many ways.

So, let’s set the scene. This is an idol anime. Originally told in a book by a former member of Nogizaka46. Showcasing how rough the idol industry can be. So, I’d better prepare for lots of melodrama and waterworks, you might be thinking? Yeah, for sure, but you also need to prepare for the most snide and manipulative human being to appear in an anime, because this character is what both breaks and makes this film.

Set in what looks to be the greater Osaka metropolitan area, we first see Yuu Azuma on a train with a notebook, with pages of notes surrounding the four cardinal directions. Immediately we’re introduced to her as wanting to form friends from all four corners of the city, because her surname means east, and she comes from the eastern part of the city. While through coincidences and connections she manages to find the three people who meet her criteria and sweet talks them into becoming friends with her, what she doesn’t tell them is that she’s actually gathering people to form an idol group so she can taste the feeling of stardom that she has already tried and failed to reach.

First off let me say I absolutely hated this film on my first time round because of how badly Yuu treats her new friends through all of this and how manipulative she is to people, thinking nothing of their true feelings and just using them, tossing them aside when she is done. Yet this is a fascinating response to the film and  it’s actually pretty clever in trying to show that there are some girls out there who would absolutely throw everyone under the bus to achieve their dreams, and the depths it goes to show this feels like it has come from personal experience. Once I’d got over the hump of my outright rejection of Yuu as a character, I actually kind-of smiled as the whole plot is very whacked up, but it plays it oh so well. You see the subtle nudging that Yuu does and her exasperation at her friends as they don’t always go in the direction she desires, meanwhile meticulously planning her next move.

Running alongside this, you’ve got a competent more typical form of idol/slice-of-life story, where the girls get together and have plenty of time to bond over a range of activities, each one of which drags the main characters into Yuu’s orbit. This gives us some time to get to know each of the main girls and what they are good at: Kurumi is a shy but hardworking girl who doesn’t like being in the spotlight despite her excellent talent for robotics, going on to win a competition with Yuu and Katori’s help; Katori is very go-with-flow and friendly, while Yuu’s childhood friend Mika does volunteering for an organisation that offers days out for kids with disabilities. Even Yuu has some talent as she uses her English from living in Canada to do guided tours around what is clearly meant to be Osaka Castle.

This is pretty fun to watch and rewarding when they get some success, but I do wish it had the time to go a bit deeper into the girls and show what really makes them tick underneath. I think this is another film, like Ghost Cat Anzu, that maybe would have benefitted from being a TV series where it could have had more time to develop its characters and show how the girls develop over time.

There’s also a key side character, Shinji, who feels like he is really underused despite being Yuu’s adviser and wingman, as he’s the only one who really knows what she is trying to do. There’s some romantic tension here too, albeit one-sided and not really explored much, as Shinji gets dumped when the girls start to make it big. (He does get some redemption at the end though, thankfully!)

More time would also have benefitted the second half in showing the big transition in mood, as two of the problems in the second half is that it doesn’t go far enough in showing how the idol industry affects our characters, and there’s a real lack of repercussions for Yuu’s behaviour when things do go wrong. It is still impactful, but it feels like it is holding itself back from making too strong a statement, and ends up in a weird, “well that was bad, but everyone can forgive each other, right?” sort of state. It’s a lighter touch and lets you leave the cinema feeling pretty good about the film, but I think it misses the point of what it was originally trying to say and ends on too light of a final note.

The music is good-yet-typical idol fare so won’t be for everybody, however there are only two major songs in this, so it is a fairly light touch. The bigger number is actually the film’s opening theme, ‘Nanmonai’ by MAISONdes featuring Hoshimachi Suisei and sakuma. This track absolutely slaps and of course carries the popular Hololive VTuber’s vocal pedigree as being one of the most talented singers in the group. The opening animation is pretty well put together too.

After two viewings, I think Trapezium is a wild and mesmerising film that takes shots at the idol industry from what I assume is personal experience, but is afraid to go too deep in case it risks making the people it’s a reflection of angry. Keep an open mind and set aside your personal feelings for the main character though and I think this comes across as one of the strongest films from the festival.

Demelza

Like Onosume I went into Trapezium having been warned of its reputation from the Glasgow showings (as well as the US release), so I was pleasantly surprised to find this was good! It ended up being my second favourite film this year, partly due to the wonderful animation from studio CloverWorks and partly due to how much I connected with the cast.

I will lead by saying Yuu is absolutely not a character you can have any kind of sympathy for. She’s chasing her dreams with no real concern for who gets hurt along the way, even her newfound friends. Because of her personality and character arc being developed this way, I can see why viewers could have come away with such an unfavourable impression of the entire work. However, I’m quite into melodramatic stories and in many ways this reminded me of a Mari Okada work like O Maidens in Your Savage Seasons – in fact after the showing I floated the idea to my fellow writers of how interesting this would have been had Okada been handling the script since it felt like it would have been in her wheelhouse.

Even if you don’t like Yuu, this is still interesting from the perspective of her and the other three characters entering the entertainment industry, particularly when, unlike Yuu, that was never their dream or even an aspiration. There’s a sense as the story goes on that the three understand Yuu has manipulated them into this, but because they have really strong bonds of friendship by that point they’re willing to let it slide so long as they’re enjoying themselves. And that is of course the point where it all comes tumbling down as Yuu basks in the spotlight and loses sight of everything else around her.

The only other downside besides Yuu is that there just isn’t enough time to spend properly developing the cast and I can only agree with Onosume that I wish they’d made this into a TV series rather than a film. Still, it does what it can to show us the lives of the girls and what they dream of and I think it succeeded in being a very interesting and different kind of idol series to what we’re used to seeing. Not for everyone, but I can at least say I’m glad to have seen it.

Look Back

Onosume

Based on the one-shot by Chainsaw Man author Tatsuki Fujimoto, Look Back tells the story of two young creators, Ayumu Fujino and Kyomoto, who come together as they battle on the pages of the school newspaper, creating very different styles of 4-koma manga. The two become close friends as they work on a submission to a manga competition, but after some breakout success together, they gradually drift apart as they get older. And as the story twists and turns towards an earth-shattering finale there are opportunities for both of them to reflect on where they have come from.

One of the core themes of this festival was reflecting on the creative process, with both this and A Few Moments of Cheers and even The Colors Within exploring the creative arts in some fashion. In Look Back we get an extensive look at the creative battle and the feeling of finding your self-worth and having yourself and others around you as both your best friends and your worst rivals.

To that end, Look Back is perfectly put together, with incredible technical detail coming out within the art and animation to the point where you can feel the weight of every line on the screen. Every sketch comes out in meticulous detail, while many of the film’s key moments are breath-taking to watch – a key scene where Ayumu runs home in the rain is staged so well it feels like you’re sitting in the studio as it is being drawn in front of you.

Yet, for all its spectacle and technical prowess, I feel there’s something missing. While many would have been drawn to this by Fujimoto’s name from Chainsaw Man, I’ve not yet touched that particular series so I come into this with only passing exposure to his work. And as such I felt nothing throughout the entire film. There’s just no heart or emotional connection to be had here, and even when there were big moments, I just felt so empty watching this that I wondered if I wasn’t getting something I should when there were other people in the cinema literally sobbing. I talked to some people after the screening to find I wasn’t alone, so I think this is more of a case where you have to be a big fan of the author to connect with what it is trying to get across.

Technically stellar it may be, but if it alienates those who aren’t into the author’s main work, then I think this has missed the mark of trying to convey the struggles of being a creator. For me, this was a huge disappointment and honestly the film I enjoyed the least from this year’s festival.

Demelza

I read Chainsaw Man, I broadly like the series, but I am not a huge fan of it the way a lot of people are. I may even whisper the words: ‘It’s a little overrated’. So when it comes to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work, I actually vastly prefer the one-shot manga he’s put out over the years which, of course, includes Look Back. 

Below, I’ve praised A Few Moments of Cheers for not overstaying its welcome and having a fairly short run-time compared to other films in the festival and while that’s true of Look Back as well, I think there would have been a benefit in spending more time with the cast. Obviously, the team are restrained by Fujimoto’s original work and there’s no simple way of expanding on it without mudding his delicate pacing, but I think it would have helped us get more attached to Kyomoto in particular. Fujino is a much louder personality and I think it’s easy to overshadow Kyomoto and make it feel like she’s just being pulled along for the ride – which is partly the main theme of the story, of course.

It doesn’t help that Fujino isn’t a particularly likeable character. I enjoyed the film from a technical aspect and the theme of becoming a mangaka/working in the manga industry, but the cast just wasn’t engaging enough compared to A Few Moments of Cheers or The Colors Within. I think I’d have come away with a better impression of this had I seen it at the wider theatrical release before Scotland Loves Anime or afterward. By itself, it may have left a more lasting impression, but here where it was competing against several other stories with similar themes I feel it fell by the wayside for me. It is still one of Fujimoto’s works I enjoy the most though, for better or worse.

Rui

I felt a little frustrated initially, having set my alarm to get tickets for this hotly-anticipated short film only to learn that it was going to get a mainstream cinema release a few weeks before the festival arrived in London. As it turned out, though, the London screening was a huge success and extra showings had to be arranged to meet the demand on the day, leading to a weary-looking Jonathan Clements having to dash between multiple screenings to introduce them all one after another!

Look Back is complicated, and I’m not sure that I’d even call it ‘likeable’ (indeed, the main character fits both of those descriptors just as much as the film does). It’s not trying to appeal to an audience, though, and in a way that gives it a refreshingly subversive lilt which is perhaps missing in a lot of longer-running titles which have to be scrutinised by a committee for years before they ever make it to our screens. The presentation has a slick, modern feel and the characters are presented relatively realistically, yet the spirit behind it strongly all appeals to the person I was buying Manga Entertainment tapes back in the 90s. This is a cynical, standalone piece of social commentary blended with a streak of whimsy, and, like the best short stories, it stuck with me long after the screening was over, inviting further thought. The visuals are lovely and the (perhaps controversial) parallels between events in the story and things that have happened in recent years in Japan felt significant; it is rare that one gets the opportunity to look directly through a successful manga artist’s eyes and see their feelings about their craft, with all but the last few layers of metaphor stripped away. While I never got into Chainsaw Man, I would definitely be interested in checking out more work from Fujimoto in future based on the strength of Look Back.

A Few Moments of Cheers

Onosume

Continuing the same theme as Look Back, A Few Moments of Cheers explores the creative process from a different medium, this time looking at making animated music videos.

Our main character is Kanata Asaya, a music video creator who is currently in the process of making a new video for his classmate’s band. However, on the way home from school one evening, he hears someone singing and is instinctively drawn towards it. A young woman stands singing her heart out with only an acoustic guitar, and her song moves Kanata so much he just has to record it to turn it into a video. The twist in the tale is that this young woman turns out to be his new teacher! In order to turn her music into video form Kanata must now impress her with his creativity, talent and drive for creating music videos.

This film takes a very different tone in its story than some of the other films on offer at the festival this year, trying to get across that even if you fail the first time round, keep plugging away at something and eventually you’ll make a success of it. It’s a simple message, but the film conveys it in a pretty endearing way as it shows the intense effort that people put in to achieve their dreams. You could maybe call it an obsession as Kanata literally drops everything to pull an all-nighter to satisfy his teacher and figure out what she wants out of the music video he is trying to create for her, but (as much as I hate the word) you can feel the intense passion for his craft coming from the script. So much so that they could have really done with turning that down in the voice acting department, as for how long you hear him babble and hype himself up it sure grates on you after a while. Also, for how recognisable Natsuki Hanae’s voice is, it’s now hard to separate him out from some of his other roles, as he’s approached this as the most upbeat shonen protagonist ever.

That said, Kanata is the least interesting character in the film, and I was more on board for it following his teacher, Yuu, as it shows how much time she’s poured into making music, only for it to not work out for her. And to be fair, it really is her story, something that the film and Kanata himself frequently forgets which I think lessens the impact of some of the film’s key scenes. There are also some odd choices with the side characters who are begging to be explored but get overshadowed by Kanata’s boundless enthusiasm. His friend Daisuke is a struggling artist who undergoes a very interesting transformation, but because the film is so focussed on Kanata, the commentary there is lost and more left to the viewer’s interpretation.

It’s in the fine details where the film truly shines though, as it depicts the usage of the same technology that was used to make the film. Animated in Blender, we see the modelling applications interface pop up at one point, along with ample use of Clip Studio Paint to the point of which it could be an advert for them! A post-film Q&A with the director revealed many fascinating technical details about how he motion-captured all the characters himself before handing the mocap data to the animators, which is a very impressive feat if you ask me.

I think there could have been more effort put into how the animated music videos themselves looked however, as I felt unimpressed and short-changed by the thing we got when it was hyped up throughout the film as the big set piece. It does get its point across but it’s very repetitive to the point I don’t think we needed to see the whole thing play out on screen. I’d go as far as saying even the film itself is lacking in terms of its visuals, and it feels very video game-esque. Yet, despite these flaws I liked the upbeat and positive ending and left the cinema feeling that I’d had a decent time with it.

So, it might not be the strongest film at the festival, but it still does a good job at getting its point across and does not overstay its runtime.

Demelza

I have the somewhat controversial opinion this year of having left the weekend with A Few Moments of Cheers being my favourite film of the festival. Yes, it was a simple story and certainly not flawless, but as a creative individual myself it spoke to me in a way the other films didn’t.

As Onosume articulates above, this story is more focused on Yuu than Kanata, but I liked how it honed in on the contrast between them. Yuu is someone who (at least at the beginning), has given up on their career whereas Kanata is very much just taking the first steps in his. That of course means they’ve had very different experiences and Kanata has yet to go through the heartbreak of failure. Still, the film does a good job of putting him through more difficult situations and the resulting emotions as it goes on. I could relate more to Yuu due to how much more she’s been through, but Kanata’s boundless enthusiasm and passion are something I understand all too well. And even if it has been sanded down through facing up to reality, I think anyone working in a creative industry or engaging with it as a hobby will understand his feelings.

Perhaps the fact this film was short and sweet helped win my affection too. It’s only a little over an hour (1 hour 8 minutes) and it manages to pack in a lot without overstaying its welcome, which I can’t say for other films this year. The only real issue is that it feels like the subplot with Kanata’s friend Daisuke fizzles out and is left for the viewers to make their own conclusions on, but I wasn’t dissatisfied with how it dealt with that storyline overall. I’m also quite the Natsuki Hanae fan and felt his very energetic, upbeat voice acting worked well for Kanata. I do agree it’s difficult to separate his character from the major shonen protagonists he’s played, but at the same time, I’m not sure I’d have liked Kanata as much as I did if Hanae had toned it down.

This is certainly a very impressive film in the visual department too; the bright colour palette really draws you in and I enjoyed watching how they depicted Kanata’s time animating his music videos. The Q&A at the end was very insightful and taught me a lot both about the director and the work that went into creating something like this vs traditional animation.

Perhaps structurally this wasn’t the strongest film and I think if you can’t relate to Kanata or Yuu then you’re simply not going to get much out of it. However, for me, this hit all the right marks thanks to the likeable cast, short but sweet story and boundless love for what it means to put yourself out there and create something.

The Scent of First Love

Onosume

While not a film, the music video for this Sajkura Fujiwara song was shown after the end of Suzume and was followed by a Q&A with director Maho Takagi. It’s a sweet little piece that follows a young woman as she goes through her memories after breaking up with her first boyfriend. While Takagi seemed rather reluctant to talk about her work in the Q&A, it was really nice seeing her being pushed as a future talent to watch, as I really love her art style (you may notice her style from the ending vignettes in Suzume) and her command of colour through this short, and I can see why Shinkai wants to keep her at CoMix Wave.

It may have been an aside but I really liked it and just want to thank Andrew and the SLA team for bringing Takagi and the CoMix Wave staff to Scotland to show off her work. The music video is available on YouTube (which I’ve included above) so please give it a watch!

Demelza

I’ve seen Suzume several times before, so I largely attended its screening to see The Scent of First Love and the Q&A afterwards. Unfortunately whether because we saw Suzume beforehand or due to Maho Takagi’s reluctance to talk about her work when quizzed by interviewer Jonathan Clements, most of the questions from the audience ended up being about CoMix Wave or Suzume itself. While I enjoyed the whole session and learnt a lot from it, I felt taking the focus away from The Scent of First Love was a shame. It’s a wonderful music video that shows a lot of promise for this fledgling director; you can certainly see why Makoto Shinkai is keen to keep her at the studio.

I always make an effort to attend all the screenings with Q&As attached at SLA since you learn so much you otherwise wouldn’t and this was certainly another great choice of guest and subject matter. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing where Takagi goes from here, having had the chance to learn more about her and her work.

Josh A. Stevens

I almost skipped this one until Demelza bullied me while I was at the gate queuing for my flight to Edinburgh. I hadn’t seen Suzume since Crunchyroll’s wide theatrical release (release it on 4K already!) and I was planning on using that slot to get a proper meal down my throat – my tip for any Scotland Loves Anime newcomers: don’t try and see everything unless you want to risk whatever takeaways are still open after 11pm. However, I’m glad that I did attend the screening.

It was the legendary director Makoto Shinkai who saw the talent in Maho Takagi and advised the producers at CoMix Wave Films to nurture it. Although a music video lasts only a moment – shorter than some scenes in the features shown that weekend – it was enough to see the talent behind it. In those five minutes. With only five minutes to work with and the song being the sole audible presence, Takagi uses photographs and candidly shot videos as vignettes to piece together the story of a relationships, and the protagonist’s reflections on its end. It is also a breath of fresh air to see a visual style from CoMix Wave Films that is so different to Shinkai’s, with a major painterly aesthetic.

The Q&A afterwards provided great insight into the inner workings of CoMix Wave Films – even if festival director Jonathan Clements was perhaps a bit too enchanted by stories of the hammocks and open bar in the studios’ break room! Takagi started out with the expected nerves of a newcomer, but did start to come out of her shell as it continued – hopefully she’ll grow more accustomed with plenty of festival appearances in her career to come!

The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of GeGeGe

Josh A. Stevens

Although it’s been years since I last watched the most recent TV anime based on the well-known supernatural comedy horror GeGeGe no Kitaro (which aired between 2018-2020), I am all too familiar with recent attempts to reinterpret beloved classics through the lens of brutal horror films for adults. While my speciality at work is undoubtedly anime, I have also been involved with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey and similar but disconnected films with similar ideas. I probably don’t need to tell you how these films tend to be received, but The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of GeGeGe made me realise that in the right hands, these films can actually be really good.

Announced to commemorate 100 years since the birth of the original manga’s creator Shigeru Mizuki, the film turns back the clock to the 1950s with a prequel that promises to tell the origin story of Kitaro’s father, who is most well-known as a disembodied eyeball with a tiny human body. Aside from a couple of brief scenes that bookend the film, this story is fortunately completely standalone. The film follows a Tokyo businessman called Mizuki (I wonder where his name comes from?), who after the passing of his company’s long-term business partner, journeys to a remote Japanese village under the guise of paying his respects, but he has two goals in mind: 1) Suck up the presumptive heir, and 2) Uncover the secret of a substance known only as “M”.

However, in typical horror fashion, this old-fashioned village doesn’t take too kindly to outsiders. The residents of the family estate are disturbed by the outsider’s presence, which is only amplified when their members start turning up dead. Before too much blame can be placed on Mizuki, however, they capture another outsider – a rather aloof fellow who claims to be searching for his wife. As the bodies start piling up in increasingly bizarre and gruesome ways, it starts to become evident that their origin may be supernatural in nature – as might the mysterious man, who forms an alliance with Mizuki.

Originally released in Japan last year, the film recently saw a release of an uncut “True Birth Edition”. The festival director was unable to confirm which version of the film was shown when I asked him following the screening, but I can’t imagine this being anything but the uncut version. “Intense” was the word I heard most people use to describe the film, which was as brutal in its gory violence as it was the dark places its narrative twisted down – an eyeball being impaled until it popped out the other end of the pipe is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m normally an absolute chicken when it comes to horror, but I’ve always been fascinated by ghost stories, and the more atmospheric stories J-horror can produce. The Birth of Kitaro: Mystery of GeGeGe is an incredible example of the genre, and until it was unseated by Totto-chan on the final day, was my favourite film of the festival. It’s an absolute shame that it is unlikely to get a UK release beyond the festival – but then again, seeing films you otherwise wouldn’t is part of what makes film festivals so great.