Freedom

May 2012
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The likeable OVA series designed by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Memories) and co-written by Katsuhiko Chiba (Blue Dragon, Slayers), Yuuichi Nomura (Xam’d: Lost Memories) and Dai Sato (Casshern, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex) finally makes it onto UK DVD and Blu-ray, but are we on too familiar ground?…

In 2267 15-year-old Takeru and his friends Kazuma and Biz live on Eden, a moon colony originally intended as a stepping zone for manned missions to Mars, but instead has become the last vestige of humanity since a global catastrophe that rendered Earth uninhabitable 100 years before.

Life in Eden is pretty idyllic and peaceful for the millions that live there, if somewhat regulated and well-managed. Takeru spends most of his time out of school racing souped-up lunar terrain vehicles against other youths the same age, which soon finds him in a spot of bother with the authorities.

While making amends on ‘volunteer’ work, Takeru finds a photo of a girl and launch site that he has never seen before in Eden. Determined to find her, he soon realises those in charge of Eden haven’t exactly been honest about Earth. But if he wants to uncover the truth the only way to do it might be to go there himself…

Hilariously, the series only came about due to a promotional project for Nissin Cup Noodles. Several scenes show the characters not only tucking into the noodles but praising them too – a whole new level of product placement!

The style of CG animation is some of the best I’ve seen. Sure, the characters movements are very obviously CG, but instead of horribly fake attempts to look like real life, director Shuhei Morita (Coicent, Kakurenbo) has gone for much more of a cell style, keeping true to Otomo’s original designs. Even if this is possibly way less complex (though perhaps not as easy as it looks to create) it has such a warmer feel. It’s well composed and looks great!

With youths speeding round on bikes the comparisons to Akira seem to scream out at you. And then there’s Alan, an octogenarian astronaut who founded an unregulated area known as ‘Freedom’ – he’s the complete spit of ‘Old Cho’ in Domu. It’s not just Katsuhiro Otomo’s extremely recognisable style at play here, the whole series seems to try a little too hard to draw on Otomo’s legacy – even though much of what he’s done since has been to move away from obvious replication of Akira.

The ideas at the root of Freedom are hardly unique either. The ‘big brother’ of bureaucracy gone mad has bee covered in 1984, Brazil, THX 1138, even the first episode of Blake’s 7. If anything the plot follows Logan’s Run, with a seemingly utopian society for all as long as you don’t want to celebrate your 31st birthday.

But therein lies my biggest issue with Freedom, it’s just not dark enough. The plot flows along well, with nice characterisation and good vocal performances – but there’s just no danger. At no point do you ever feel that anything bad will happen to any of the characters, neither on Eden where you might expect dissenters to go missing, nor on unreconstructed Earth where you might expect some chaos at least.

Hence the story loses a lot of needed bite. It’s hard to see why these boys would want to go after freedom so badly if their rulers are so affable. And you can’t really appreciate freedom unless you really don’t have it. Oddly, this seems to be the truly off-putting repercussion of the Nissin Cup Noodles sponsorship – as if the company didn’t want itself to be associated with anything too sinister in tone.

That’s not to suggest the result isn’t extremely enjoyable, but it does give the film a very ‘kid-friendly’ tone – like an anime version of Explorers, but that’s not such a bad thing… (is it?)

Freedom is available from today on DVD and a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray from Manga Entertainment.

DVD details

Distributor: Manga Entertianment (UK)

Edition: 2-Disc DVD (2011)

Vibrant, clear presentation of the film on picture, with good sound in original Japanese and English dub options. The first disc features the entire series, with the second packed with bonus features, including: Introduction Trailer ; Freedom Digests;  Talking About Freedom Session 1 ; Talking About Freedom Session 2 ; Freedom In The USA 1 ; Freedom In The USA 2 ; Another Vehicle Race;  Nissin Cup Noodle TV Commercial Digest;  Freedom: The Hope;  Fly Me To The Moon 1 (The Apollo's Journey) ; Fly Me To The Moon 2 (From The Apollo To Freedom); Next Episode Trailers ; Messages From The Characters ; Opening Credits; Closing Credits.

The Collector's edition Blu-ray comes with all of the above, plus the series in High Definition on Blu-ray. (The OVA series was originally released on HD DVD until the format lost out to Blu-ray!) You also get four art cards packaged in a beautifully designed slip cover.