There was one dispatch in my Nippon Connection presentation almost two weeks back that I've been meaning to share on the blog here, mainly since it hasn't received enough foreign press outside of animation circles, I don't think. I spoke about how the exporting of "Cool Japan," of which anime is of course a huge part, is not just limited to commercial endeavors.
Animated short film Megumi (『めぐみ』) depicts the case of North Korean abductee Megumi Yokota, who vanished on her way home from school in 1977.
There have been other films about the incident such as 2006 American documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story and more recently Until They Took Her Away, co-produced by our friends over at 100m Films.
A special government body named The Headquarters for the Abduction Issue set up to deal with the the ongoing search for victims and answers produced Megumi, based on a manga of the same name. The body believed that anime, which is of course one of Japan’s biggest exports, was the best way to reach a wider audience at home and overseas.
The film was released online at the end of March and screened at the Tokyo Anime Fair (TAF). You can download the film in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean here (I'd only recommend the Broadband MPEG4 version).
There are also plans to screen the film for free at cinemas in Japan and abroad.
5 comments:
I am concerned about this film's possible political bias despite being funded by the taxpayer, and demand an immediate private screening to ensure that it is in the public's best interests.
Haha, yes sir.
Nothing witty to add. I'm all typed out...
Ofcourse it is in the public's best interest!
Remember Shinzo Abe,the would-have-been-George-W.Bush-crony in the far east?
His planned "assertive North Korean Policy"so feared by the medias in East and West alike?
Well,Here it is.
Japanese soft power projected in the form of Moe girl anime!
Aceface
Their cause isn't helped by the atrocious English dub. Yikes. The mother in particular sounds like a mental defective. Conversely, the integration of real photos was a nice touch.
The bad dubbing was mentioned on some anime sites. I just checked out a bit of the English version -- it is OTT. I guess they wanted foreign kids to watch it so they did a dub instead of subtitles, but both would've been good.
Post a Comment