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Reel Anime 2013 to Screen Double Bill of The Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell Arise
posted on by Jon Hayward
The news of The Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell Arise being screened back to back were confirmed via a press release from Madman Entertainment. This double bill joins Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (not) Redo (announcement here), 009 Re:Cyborg (announcement here) and A Letter to Momo (announcement here) as part of this year's event. Details as to what cinemas and when Reel Anime 2013 will be screened will be confirmed closer to October.
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Ghost in the Shell Arise
Set in the year 2027, one year after the end of the non-nuclear World War IV. A bomb explodes in Newport City and kills a military officer implicated in arms-dealing and the mysterious 501 Organisation. During the investigation Public Security Section 9's Daisuke Aramaki encounters Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg hacker assigned to the 501st. "Sleepless Eye" Batou suspects that Kusanagi is behind the bombing and Niihama Prefecture Detective Togusa is investigating a series of murders he believes are related to the incident.
Consisting of four 50-minute parts, Ghost in the Shell Arise is an OVA series following the first meeting of Motoko Kusanagi and Section 9. The parts are called borders and border:1 Ghost Pain was released to Japanese theaters on the 22nd of June 2013. border:2 Ghost Whispers will be released on the 20th of November 2013.
Kazuchika Kise (chief animation director for Otogi Zoshi, Blood-C: The Last Dark) is directing the series and designing the characters and Tow Ubukata (Le Chevalier D'Eon, Mardock Scramble) is supervising and writing the scripts. Production I.G is producing the series, and Cornelius (Appleseed: Ex Machina) is composing the music.
The series has a new voice cast with Maaya Sakamoto as Mokoto Kusanagi, Kenichirou Matsuda as Batou, Tarusuke Shingaki as Togusa, Tomoyuki Dan as Ishikawa, Takurou Nakakuni as Saito, Youji Ueda as Paz, Kazuya Nakai as Borma, Ikkyuu Juku as Daisuke Aramaki, Mayumi Asano as Kurutsu, and Takanori Hoshino as Raizō.
© Shirow Masamune • Production I.G / KODANSHA • GHOST IN THE SHELL ARISE COMMITTEE
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The Garden of Words
The Garden of Words is Makoto Shinkai's latest work in colloboration with CoMix Wave Films. Makoto Shinkai stated that this film is the first time he is making a "love" story based on the traditional Japanese meaning of the word. At one time, "love" was written as "lonely sadness" (koi) but over time the modern concept of "love" (ai) was imported from the West. While Kotonoha no Niwa is set in the modern era, it will be about koi in the original meaning — of longing for someone in solitude.
Makoto Shinkai started work creating video clips for games and graphic design at Falcom. However his first anime title was the self animated, directed and produced five-minute short, She and Her Cat, in 1999 which received the grand prize in the 2000 DoGA CG Animation competition. Shinkai then quit his job in 2001 and started work on Voices of a Distant Star, a 90 minute feature film he wrote, directed, animated, produced and even voice-acted the main characters with his fiancé all from his desktop Power Mac G4. Shinkai then went onto Direct, write, produce and perform multiple duties on The Place Promised in Our Early Days in 2004, 5 Centimetres Per Second in 2007 and Children Who Chase Lost Voices in 2011.
- Makoto Shinkai, director and writer, The Garden of Words
The Garden of Words received it's world premiere at the Gold Coast Film Festival earlier this year. You can view the subtitled trailer below;
Image ©Makoto Shinkai/CoMix Wave Films
If you would like further information on Reel Anime 2013 titles you can visit Madman's Reel Anime 2013 website.