Sakura Wars: The Movie

Sakura Wars: The Movie (2001)

サクラ大戦 活動写真

Following in the aftermath of a terrible Demon-Human war, turn of the century Japan is preparing a new fighting force in case the demons decide to return. A squadron of giant robots are built to be controlled by the spirit of the pilot, but it is discovered that the only people with sufficient spirit are young women. After recruiting a team of youths from around the world, the Japanese government decides to keep them a secret by disguising them as a theater troupe, thus requiring them to spend as much time memorizing Shakespeare as they do on military training.

Date of release
2001-12-22
TMDB
4.7 / 10 (15)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Action, Animation, Comedy, Science Fiction
Director
Mitsuru Hongo

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: ¥2.8B
  • Budget: ¥500M
  • Earned 5.6× its budget

Sakura Wars: The Movie is a 2001 Japanese animated action-adventure film produced by Production I.G and distributed by Toei Company based on the video game franchise published by Sega. Directed by Mitsuru Hongo, and written by Hongo, Hiroyuki Nishimura, Nobuhisa Terado and Oji Hiroi, Sakura Wars: The Movie stars the voices of Chisa Yokoyama, Michie Tomizawa, Urara Takano, Kumiko Nishihara, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Mayumi Tanaka, Maya Okamoto, Kazue Ikura, and Ai Orikasa.

Production

Sakura Wars creator Oji Hiroi had envisioned making a film based on the Sakura Wars series since the release of the original game in 1996. This wish was greatly magnified after seeing the animation work of Production I.G, which was responsible for producing the anime FMV sequences in Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die.

The film was directed by Mitsuru Hongo, who had previously directed adaptations of Outlaw Star and The Candidate for Goddess. Otsuki served as executive producer. Hongo and Hiroi contributed to the script along with Hiroyuki Nishimura and Nobuhisa Terado. Original Sakura Wars scriptwriter Satoru Akahori served as the film's supervisor.

Hiroi's wish for the film was to create an experience that neither the games nor other media such as the stage performances had been able to capture. Like their work on Sakura Wars 3, Production I.G used a fusion of traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI graphics in their then-new technique, "Neo-CGI".

Regular series composer Kohei Tanaka scored the film. Tanaka composed the film's music between May and June 2001. While previously faced with technical limitations with games and other limits with related productions, Tanaka was able to expand the scope of his music within a film environment. Several themes from the original video games were rewritten for orchestra.

The opening theme "Miracle Bell" was sung by the entire main female cast, while the ending musical number "Everything is Into the Sea" was sung by Kuno and Sakura's voice actress Chisa Yokoyama. During the film's recording sessions, Yokoyama was performing in a Sakura Wars stage play of The Sea God's Villa, which was reproduced in the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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