Missed in Yubari, but caught in cinema thanks to a friend's recommendation. Brief review:
The Burning Buddha Man (2013)
Debut director Ujicha animation gem is bound to be the year’s most unique cinematic experience.
The storyline begins when the young Beniko discovers her parents have been brutally slain with half of their torsos missing. It turns out the sculptors are some kind of terrorists who steal Buddha statues to protect them. The hits are done using a teleport, however, failed attempts result in both the statue and any living begins close to them being transported and reconstructed into mutated man-stone statues. After a mysterious monk takes Beniko under his protection she is introduced to a world of bizarre monsters and spiritualism.
The brief summary above is only the starting point in the film that gets increasingly imaginative. No less unusual is the technical execution, which utilizes cardboard characters moved against hand-made backgrounds in front of a camera. The style is known as gekimation, and hasn’t been used in cinema for decades. It takes a while to get used to, but works wonderfully. A moody soundtrack completes the package. Live action scenes are utilized for the opening and closing sequences, featuring popular anime seiyu Yuka Iguchi who voices the main character.
Japanese DVD and BD came out recently, and seem to have English subs, too!
edit: several sites list English subtitles for the BD, but don't mention about subs for the DVD. Probably the DVD is also subbed, but I can't be sure. If I happen to see this in a shop I'll take a look at the back cover
Does anyone know if the japanese Blu-Ray is region free/all region? I've seen contradictory information about this ... And does the DVD have english subs?
I can't, unfortunately. There is no mention of a region code on the BD's back cover, I'm not aware of any software being able to identify BD region codes and I lack the hardware to check the disc's compatibility with players set for other regions.
Thanks! And thank you for your answers. I'll give it a shot, should the disc turn out to be encoded I'll work it out. Thinking about it, I might actually have a friends old PS3 with the right region coding set in a box somewhere.
I would say the BD is most likely region free. Companies don't region code for fun (it hurts their sales), they region code because of contractual demands aimed at selling rights to multiple different markets. This being a minor (in terms of commercial potential) film released domestically by a Japanese company, it would seem unlikely they would need to region code it.
That being said, I know next to nothing about anime markets, so I could be wrong.
Makes sense. Most disc of this kind ("minor" movies with less commercial potential) I've encountered has turned out to be region free. If I remember correctly, even Mamoru Oshiis Tenchi no Tamago (Angels Egg) is region free (worked for me here in Sweden, at least).
Great to hear! I mean, I was assuming as much, since they included English subtitles and it'd make little sense to do that and then region lock the disc, but it's still good to hear you got a disc that's playing for you.
