Category: Fantasy

Warner Bros. Japan has uploaded the full trailer for Gisaburo Sugii’s upcoming animated film Guskō Budori no Denki to their YouTube channel.

The film is based on a fairy tale by Kenji Miyazawa about a young man who’s driven from his forest home by a natural disaster and begins working with scientists at the Ihatov Volcano Bureau in hopes of preventing similar disasters from occurring in the future. Sugii previously adapted Miyazawa’s most notable work, Night on the Galactic Railroad, in 1985.

Like the 1985 film, this adaptation features anthropomorphic cat characters instead of humans. It also involves Gusko Budori’s sister Neri being kidnapped and is obviously steeped in new fantasy elements added for this version.

Here’s main voice cast:

Shun Oguri as Gusko Budori
Shioli Kutsuna as Neri
Ryuzo Hayashi as Father
Tamiyo Kusakari as Mother
Kuranosuke Sasaki as the kidnapper
Akira Emoto as Dr. Kubo
Shōzō Hayashiya IX as Akahige (Red Beard)

“Guskō Budori no Denki” will be released by Warner Bros. in Japan on July 7, 2012.

Edit: WB took the upload down. Embedded a new copy.

Cinema Today has posted the new trailer for Sho Tsukikawa’s Good Coming - Toru to Neko, Tama ni Neko, a short film starring Tori Matsuzaka.

“Good Coming” is a new pop group on Sony Music that debuted in February by providing the new outro theme to the Gintama anime series. Their second single “Ashita ni” is the film’s theme and will be released on June 20th. The trio also appear in the film.

Matsuzaka plays Toru, an apprentice chef who takes home a cute stray cat one night while wishing for a cute girl. The next morning he wakes up to find the cat has turned into one (Mio Uema). Haru and Bengal co-star.

“Good Coming - Toru to Neko, Tama ni Neko” will be screened nation-wide at Toho Cinemas locations on June 4, 2012.

A new trailer for Shogo Kusano’s Empty has been uploaded to the film’s official YouTube channel.

Back in March, a 3+ minute “teaser” was released, but it was sort of repetitive and plodding. The new trailer is a bit more succinct.

The film stars Naoya Shimizu as a high school boy named Koban Kato with no family, friends, money or social presence. He does, however, possess a strange ability. Whenever he’s not being noticed by the people around him, he literally vanishes—leaving only his clothing behind.

One day, Koban is kicked out of his house and meets a girl named Sheena (Airi Taira), who also has no place to live. Sheena is fascinated by Koban’s special ability and has a suggestion of how they can make use of it together.

Soon, their antics cause the locals in their sleepy town to become convinced they’ve spotted a mythical white kappa on a supermarket security tape, and a reward is offered for its capture.

“Empty” premiered last month at the Okinawa International Movie Festival as part of the “Panoramic Screening” (non genre-specific) category. According to the new official website, it will be screened in Orihime-cho, Kiryu-shi, Gunma Prefecture on April 30th. It will get a wider release in Gunma on May 19, 2012 and Tokyo on June 16th.

The official website for Yukichi Otsuka’s Soup has been updated with a new trailer embed.

The story was inspired by Ken Morita’s “Umarekawari no Mura”, a non-fiction novel about people in China who claim to remember past lives. The idea of a “legendary soup” came from the book and became the basis of the movie.

In his first starring film role, Katsuhisa Namase plays a 50-year-old salaryman named Kenichi Shibutani who’s been divorced for five years and has an awkward relationship with his daughter Mika (Yuiko Kariya). The day before Mika’s 15th birthday, he’s killed by a bolt of lightning on the side of the road along with one of his superiors from the office, Ayase (Manami Konishi).

In the afterlife, they’re told they can be reincarnated if they drink a “legendary soup”, but they’ll lose all memories from their former life in the process. Refusing to accept the idea of forgetting his daughter, Shibutani instead tries to unravel the secrets of the soup by wandering around the afterlife with Ayase as he attempts to continue his fatherly role from the other side.

“Soup” will be released in Japan sometime in July.