Format: Region Free DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles and Japanese Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Length: 50 minutes
Production Date: 2014
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
A young couple head home from the hospital with their new baby girl on a quiet country road. On a bend in the road a truck suddenly loses control and has a head on collision with the couple’s car. Fast forward 19 years and the baby is now a grown woman named Orine Shionoha. After shopping at a convenience store late at night, Orine checks the receipt only to discover that it’s actually a hand written note which reads “Come quickly”. Confused and little frightened by what she has read, she hurries off into the night. She is soon surrounded by a number of men in suits with commination devices. Their leader, Yuri Aoshima, tells Orine that she knows she is on the run from the police. Yuri offers Orine the chance to work for her in exchange for plane tickets and cash for her and her boyfriend. Orine has no real option but to cooperate.
Orine’s job is to board a private company’s space station where an experiment has apparently gone awry. She is given no real briefing as to what she is about to encounter. Inside Orine is confronted by a male voice via the ship’s PA system. The voice tells her to take the elevator down to main section of the space station. There she must turn down a corridor where there will be a blue door. Inside the room will be her mother, Satomi Shionoha. This astonishes Orine as she has been told that her mother died in a car accident just after she was born. Sure enough as the door opens, Orine discovers her month in the room. Though she hasn’t aged a single day in 19 years, it certainly looks like her mother. Satomi explains that she has been in cryogenic hibernation and has been recently revive. Orine is rather sceptical of Satomi’s claims and doesn’t really believe it’s her mother.
Arriving back at the shuttle which brought her to the space station, Orine demands an explanation from Yuri as to what is going on. Yuri explains it isn’t her real mother, but a kind of clone/android hybrid of her mother and that Satomi is part of a computer system of the space station. One of the scientists working on a project for the company took over the space station and refuses to hand back control to the company. Yuri asks her to shut down the system so the company can regain control. Orine returns to her mother’s room as the pair “make up for lost time”, watching movies, play video games, eat and talk. Orine has conflicting thoughts about what she is about to do. If she switches off the space station’s system, it will end her “mother’s life”, even though she knows she isn’t her real mother.
This is self-produced and released film is a little bit on the weird side of things. It was animated by one man team Naoya Kurisu, who releases CG animation under the amusing name of Hand to Mouse (very appropriate for a poor CG artist). The pilot film included on the disc is from 2007, which means it took 7 years to complete the film. Oddly that pilot film includes a couple of scenes not present in the final film. Naoya has previously made a number of short CG films and was also commissioned to do a few TV commercials as well. This is his longest film to date and got a very limited three cinema release in Japan in April 2015. Prior to that, it received several film festival screenings across the world. Unsurprisingly this film has received little to no coverage on anime news websites. I feel that Naoya’s work is similar to Jun Awazu’s CG films (“Negadon: The Monster from Mars” and “Planzet”). Both are solo CG artists and both are generally ignored by anime fandom. Though Awazu’s films are far, far more popular than Naoya’s. While both mostly cover the sci-fi genre, Awazu’s films are far more commercial and accessible.
The promotional images for “Sleep Tight My Baby, Cradled in the Sky” invoke images of a family drama, especially with the image of a mother holding her baby. The film however veers from sci-fi drama to corporate conspiracy, to out and out horror. It’s a really strange film in terms of story and plot. At times the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The biggest question which remains unanswered in the film is why the corporation chose Orine’s mother and why the rouge scientist did what he did. I won’t spoil the plot in terms of what the corporation was experimenting on and why they were doing it, but the explanations in the film regarding the company's choice of Satomi or why she is connected to the space station’s computer system either don’t make a lot of sense or are not explained at all.
Like a lot of CG Japanese animation, yet again this film leaves a lot to be desired when compared to international productions. I completely understand that this film’s budget is far lower than western productions, however some scenes look pretty awkward. In particular some of Orine’s facial expressions are unintentionally hilarious and the scenes of her crying don’t work at all. Some of the character animation can be quite stiff or even static at times. Having said that, as per usual in these types of productions, the mecha scenes look fantastic. In fact the majority of the character animation is pretty good, despite the obvious low budget. Unlike a lot of his contemporaries, Naoya uses the CG environment to his advantage with quite interesting sweeps across landscapes and even a point of view of Satomi climbing back into the back of the car. Also for such a small production, there is quite a good voice cast for the film; Kikuko Inoue (Belldandy in “Oh! My Goddess”) providing the voice of Satomi, Atsuko Tanaka (the original Motoko Kusanagi in the “Ghost in the Shell” movies and TV series) voicing Yuri and Hiroaki Hirata (Sanji in “One Piece” and Kotetsu T. Kaburagi in “Tiger & Bunny”) voicing the rouge scientist.
Hand to Mouse seems to have been aiming this film towards the English speaking market. This is apparent in closing credits which are bilingual, the English website for the film and of course the English subtitles on the DVD. It’s unfortunate that English speaking anime fans haven’t even acknowledged the film at all, yet alone made any judgement on it. I only noticed the existence of the film and DVD in the last couple of months. There isn’t a large distributor or promotional push behind the film, so it’s not all that surprising that the film wallows in obscurity.
Of course the other major problem with the film is that it’s a bit mediocre. The story and plot aren’t bad at all. However it’s a bit clichéd. We have seen it all before. And to be honest, some parts of it are just a little bit laughable. But on balance and to be fair, it’s not a bad film at all. Maybe if Naoya worked on the story a bit more, had a couple more staff and a larger budget, it’d be a far better film. 6 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: Nine series, five movies, two OVAs also waiting for second parts for three shows to be released before viewing them.
No comments:
Post a Comment