(Note: This is the second part of a review of Freedom. The first part can be read here.)

After a release schedule spanning nearly two years, Sunrise and Nissin Cup Noodle’s Freedom Project OVA finally wrapped up in May of last year. Unusually for an anime series, a Blu-ray box-set was released worldwide on 11th November 2008 – coincidentally while I happened to be in Tokyo. Thinking it would be cool to pick one up on launch day in Akihabara, I was pretty shocked when I saw the price – ￥15520, or about $174. Ouch. At first it seems like a perplexing amount for a 7 episode anime box-set, but this is an OVA, where fans had been paying up to ￥ 3162 ($35) for each individual episode. The amount Japanese otaku are often willing to pay for their anime and manga is one of the main cultural differences that separates them from their western counterparts, and it’s a commitment that the industry often depends on in order to produce large scale, high budget projects such as Freedom.

Patiently, I waited. Not only, it turned out, until I got back to the UK (where the box-set is available at a far more reasonable price) but also until Christmas morning, when through the generosity of my partner I finally got my hands on it. The question was, did the final parts live up to the first four I’d reviewed last year?

The second half of Freedom makes a significant shift in focus, not just in the setting, but also subsequently in the shows art style and character development. With Takeru and Biz now stranded on the newly re-discovered Earth the futuristic, artificial environments of Eden give way to the rolling, open planes of America, as the pair make their way to Florida to find the senders of the message Takeru received in the very first episode. As well as allowing the artists to shift to a warmer, more organic palette, it also gives the writers a chance to explore a different side of the characters.

If I had one concern from the first few episodes, it was that the main protagonists seemed to be little more than Akira style archetypes, interested in little more than bikes and girls. But when Takeru and Biz finally reach the remains of Cape Canaveral, the story changes, becoming a coming-of age tale as the two become part of the survivors community, gain new values and fall in love. Together with their new friends they spend a couple of years working in NASA’s Apollo scrapyard to build a rocket that can take them back to the Moon – not just so they can get home, but so they can show Eden that Earth still lives, bring back to Earth vital supplies to stop their new community from starving, and most importantly confront the Lunar authorities that have suppressed the truth from their people for so long. While the ‘teenager becoming an adult’ theme is hardly original in anime, it’s seldom done as well as it is in Freedom, with a witty and punchy script that makes you believe in the enthusiasm and drive of it’s main characters.

Without straying too much into spoiler territory, it’s safe to say that the story doesn’t stay Earth bound for too long. The series’ hour-long finale takes the action back to the moon, giving fans another hit of Otomo’s fantastic mechanical and character designs, as the bike riding teenagers take the battle to Eden’s oppressive leaders. Of particular note are the ‘Octopus’ mecha, immediately reminiscent to hardcore Akira fans of the ‘Care Taker’ robots from the original manga.

Put simply, Freedom Project is excellent. It manages to carry the pace and excitement generated in the first episodes despite the huge shift in setting, while simultaneously adding depth to it’s characters and back-story. With animation and CGI that seems to improve in quality towards the end, it’s hard to not recommend it to a wider audience than the Otomo fanatic to home it initially appealed. The BR box-set is a great buy – nicely put together and presented, with a short manga booklet and some great extras – the highlights of which are the informal, light-hearted interviews with Shuhei Morita (director) Dai Sato (screenwriter/planner). It might seem a little expensive at first, but it’s worth it – and at least you’re not paying those Japanese prices.

(Note: This is the second part of a review of Freedom. The first part can be read here.)

You’ve probably heard the news already.

If you haven’t, well…it’s finally happened. After months of Hollywood rumours and speculation, Fox have confirmed that they have greenlit a live action version of Cowboy Bebop with Keanu Reeves taking the lead role of Spike Spiegel.

Not that I’m anti the idea of a live action, high budget version – in fact, it’s something I’ve daydreamed about for years now. Done right it could be a fantastic piece of sci-fi action cinema. But, like probably every other single anime blogger out there, today I’m just a little concerned about that piece of casting.

Not that I hate Keanu – he was fine in the first Matrix flick, and the beautiful, hugely underrated A Scanner Darkly – it’s just that he was never who I had in mind for the role of Spike. I think I was probably hoping for an Asian actor. In fact, my first choice had always been Stephen Chow. He’s got the subtly, charisma and humour to pull off the role – not to mention the stunt and martial arts skills. But it’s Reeves we’ve got, and that’s not going to change – it’s clearly the main reason Fox has agreed to greenlight the project in the first place. What’s more pressing now is sorting out the rest of the cast.

Casting Jet Black is probably going to be the easiest part. Ron Perlman would be a great fit – age, look and delivery wise. I always had Jean Reno in my head for some reason, but maybe he’s a bit too, y’know, French.

Finding a convincing Faye Valentine is going to be much, much more difficult. Casting the solar system’s sexiest 200 year-old compulsive gambler needs to be done carefully. Again, Christina Ricci pops into my head, but then to be fair she’s been doing that for years anyway. Joking aside, she’s a perfect fit for the role, in both terms of looks and attitude. As for casting Edward…well, I don’t envy that job. Child actors scare the life out of me. I know one thing for sure, it can’t be fucking Dakota Fanning.

Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves here though – before a cast, we need a director. And a script. We’ve got a producer apparently; Erwin Stoff, who worked on the aforementioned A Scanner Darkly. Even more positively Sunrise’s Kenji Uchida and and the godlike genius of Shinichiro Watanabe will serve as associate producers alongside series writer Keiko Nobumoto. Series producer Masahiko Minami will serve as a production consultant. Hmm. Maybe there’s hope for this project yet.

Let’s pray so, because if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right, first time. Because you’ve got to convince the studio that it’s worth letting you do two more. That’s the only way to do the show’s characters, story arcs and pacing justice. One of the main reasons Bebop worked so well was how gently it eased you into the characters, revealing their back stories slowly over time. The audience needs to find out about Spike’s shady past, about how Jet lost his arm, and why Faye’s heart-wrenching history has turned her into such a bitch. Cramming all that into one movie just won’t work though. Bebop is big, and it needs space to breath…

Oh, and Fox? One more thing. Don’t mess the music up. Use Yoko Kanno‘s orginal funk-jazz-country-techno score. If you need more of it, then pay her whatever it takes to make more. Please.

Next Week: Tim shares his views on the Hollywood adaptation of Samurai Champloo staring Jason Statham and Masi Oka.

To the uninitiated, the Japanese anime industry and the culture that surrounds it can seem perplexing at times, to say the least. In the west, when a film or TV show is released directly to video or DVD, its usually a sign of inferior quality or very limited market appeal. Or, in other words, it’s too shit to be shown at the cinema. Plus usually we’re talking about the sort of unoriginal, opportunist, unnecessary sequels that Disney were famous for churning out a few years ago. Jungle Book Two, anyone? God help us.

But in Japan, things are different. The market for anime is so strong, and anime fans so loyal and rabid in their spending that direct to video OVA (Original Video Animations) can make enough money to justify high budgets and risk taking concepts. It also frees the studios of other restrictions placed on them by TV broadcasters and film distributors – such as, in the case of Freedom, corporate sponsorship. Co-funded by Nissin Cup Noodles to celebrate their 35th anniversary, the show features explicit product-placement throughout, as well as apparently featuring heavily in real-world marketing for the company’s products in Japan.

So then…a direct to video anime series, sponsored and heavily branded by an instant noodles company. Doesn’t sound great on paper, to be honest. But, like I just said, in Japan things are different, and Freedom has a couple of very good reasons to grab your interest. Firstly, it boasts character and vehicle designs by legendary Akira and Steamboy creator Katsuhiro Otomo, which in itself is enough to get most anime fans all kinds of excited. And, secondly, it’s actually really rather good.

I can’t get too much into plot details without entering spoilers territory, so I’ll keep things simple. It’s the 23rd century, and Earth has been left inhospitable by a major ecological disaster. The only remnants of the human race are crammed into a single domed city on the far side of the moon, named Eden. The story of the OAV, originally to be told over 6 (although now apparently extended to 7) 25min episodes, focuses on three teenagers; Takeru, Kazuma and Bismark, who spend their free time building and racing futuristic motorbikes in semi-legal races in the pipes beneath Eden. After an accident at a race, Takeru is sent outside to check for leaks as a punishment, he finds something to suggest that the inhabitants of Eden may not be so alone…

And from there I can’t tell you much more, without risking spoiling it for you, but the story is pretty well paced and the characters, whilst never too deep or challenging, seem to develop quite nicely. Visually it is stunning at times, especially during the first episode, which concentrates on introducing the main characters and their activities, and immediately you can see where Otomo’s time and skill has been put to use. Scruffy teenagers and futuristic motorbikes…the influence of Akira is instantly recognisable. If you were feeling cynical you could say his involvement was merely a marketing one – getting his name and designs featured in this corporate sponsored project is quite a scoop, especially as the bikes aren’t hugely integral to the plot as far as I’ve seen – and there would be a certain amount of truth to that. But when it looks as fantastic and stylish as Freedom often does, it’s hard to care. There are some lovely touches, like bike-obsessed Bismark’s Quadrophenia era Mod influenced Parka outfit. And as to the Noodles product placement, it’s blatant, but only about once or twice an episode, and by the third one the writers are having a genuine, knowing laugh with it.

Like I said at the top, there’s a lot of things that are perplexing about Japanese TV and anime. The one that gets me the most is how strong the demand for quality science fiction television must still be in Japan. While it might not, as yet, quite rank alongside Planetes and Cowboy Bebop in terms of SF storytelling, it’s still light years ahead of the kind of turgid, garish, childish crap like Doctor Who or the numerous dead-from-the-neck-down Star Trek spin-offs we only seem able to produce in the west.

I’ve only seen the first 4 episodes, so it’s still early days yet. If there is one thing that annoys, it’s the bizarre release schedule – one episode on each disc, with each disc being released a few months apart, meaning that although the first one was released in November 2006 we’ll have to wait until early summer 2008 for the conclusion. But it’s certainly a series I’ll be keeping an eye on, and as soon as I’ve seen more I’ll be letting you know what I think.

Read the second part of this review here.