OtakuNews two new ghibli movies to be released this summer

Studio Ghibli and its distributor TOHO officially announced Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Is Rising) and Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya), the latest films from studio co-founders and directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, on Thursday. Both are scheduled to open throughout Japan next summer.

In February 2009, Miyazaki launched a two-part manga mini-series called "Kaze Tachinu" that focuses on Jirō Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's famed Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane of World War II. Author Tatsuo Hori also wrote a novel called Kaze Tachinu, and the film's tagline references both real-life figures and paraphrases Hori's book: "Show respect for Jiro Horikoshi and Tatsuo Hori. We must try to live." (Hori himself was reportedly quoting Paul Valéry's "Le cimetière marin" or "The Graveyard By The Sea" poem, which read, "Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!" or "The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!")

Frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi is composing the music of the film. Miyazaki is not only directing the film, but he conceived the story and wrote the screenplay himself. This will be the first film from Miyazaki since Ponyo about five years ago.

The famous Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) centers on princess named Kaguya who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. Taketori Monogatari has inspired dozens of manga and anime stories, such as Reiko Shimizu's Kaguya Hime and Arina Tanemura's Sakura-Hime Kaden.

Takahata already revealed in 2009 that his next film will be based on the folktale. The tagline on the film's website reads, "A princess's crime and punishment."

Shinichiro Ikebe (Future Boy Conan, Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha) is composing the film's soundtrack. Takahata conceived the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Riko Sakaguchi. This will be Takahata's first film since My Neighbors the Yamadas about 14 year ago.

TOHO had already registered the domains for the websites for these two films, but it opened the websites on Thursday.

Both films will open on the same day, but separately. The last time that Miyazaki and Takahata had films opening on the same day, or even in the same year, was a quarter of a century ago when Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies were shown back-to-back in Japan in 1988.

otakunick reviews Wasurenagumo

Hey guys its otakunick again still working thew the backlog of animes that I had watched wall on my brake today its Wasurenagumo. One of the four anime works that each received 38 million yen (about US$470,000) from the "2011 Young Animator Training Project." Just like in 2010, the animation labor group received 214.5 million yen (US$2.65 million) from the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs, and it distributed most of those funds to studios who train young animators on-the-job.

   Wasurenagumo is a story about a middle aged used book store owner and his assistant. Who one day release an ancient spider demon from an old book the shop owner Suzuri Shu acquired for a privet collector. From there its a story about them tiring to sell the ridiculously cute demon away again be for it begins devouring people as it did in times past.

  Now then the animation is your standered production I.G art and by that I meen it looks good everything is animated well and thar are absalutly no real issues but as I stated in the first paragraph this OVA was brout about by up and coming animators so the art style is a bit ruff around the edges in fact this OVA kinda feels like what youd get if production I.G outsorced to studio Ghibli

the music thow used sparingly was good the OST contains a nice mix of more traditional Japanese scores to sum newer sounding stuff. But sum how remains consistent and blend well my favret of song would be the ending witch sum how manijes to sound bot traditional and new at the same time. Making shore sum thing that can be listened to constantly at lest for me.


The voice work is good the charters have sum pretty exserinsed talent behind them and every one seems to be having sum fun. So yea the voice work gets a pass but the only time you rely have to worry abouce bad dubs is when you get into the ENG dubs of anime.

Over all I think this is a OVA that should be seen. Not for anything ground braking it dose but just simply for the fact that for a 25 OVA it dose a good job at telling a story. A story mind you that feels like it should get atlest 2 or maby 3EP but they did great with what they got and deserve to have this seen.