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Live-Action Anime: Casshern

Silverhammer writes "Apple Japan is hosting the trailer (Quicktime required, of course) for an upcoming movie called simply CASSHERN. There have been many attempts at so-called 'live-action anime', but this is possibly the most impressive attempt I've ever seen. Part 'Final Fantasy', part 'Brazil', with CG and green screen work that puts even 'LoTR' to shame. (Hat tip: Penny Arcade)."

20 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Matrix? by kundor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    There have been many attempts at so-called 'live-action anime', but this is possibly the most impressive attempt I've ever seen.

    More impressive than the original matrix?

    The Wachowski brothers were very much anime-motivated in that movie...

    1. Re:Matrix? by chendo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Indeed they were.

      Here is a detailed comparison between The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell. IMHO, page 6 is the one that shows the fact The Matrix was heavily based around Ghost in the Shell. Watermelons exploding from bullets during a marketplace chase scene? Hmmmmmm...

      --
      Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
  2. Attempts? by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Sailor Moon Live-Action anime is one of the more humorous attempts

    http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainSer vl et/showid-22841/

    Or go to animesuki.com for torrents of the series.

    --
    This is the sig that says NI (again)
  3. Original anime version by News+for+nerds · · Score: 4, Informative

    FYI DVD-box for the original anime version from 1973

    Original anime version characters

    One of original anime character designers is AMANO Yoshitaka, who is famous for original character designer of Final Fantasy.

  4. Direct Link by FrostedWheat · · Score: 4, Informative

    The large version is Here! I haven't got it yet.. so go easy :p

  5. Questions about CASSHERN... by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't follow anime that closely nor Japanese cinema at all, but I watched the trailer and the eye candy looked pretty good. I have a bunch of questions:
    1) Will there be a release in English?
    2) If so, will it have subtitles or overdubbing?
    3) Where was the movie shot?
    4) The actors and target audience are clearly Japanese. Was the rest of the production (directing, crew, special effects) all done by Japanese?
    5) Most of the writing in the trailer was Japanese (no surprise), but the title (CASSHERN) was in English. Is there any significance to this? Is this a common practice? Does the movie have both a Japanese and an English title? (I couldn't tell on the Japanese side.)
    6) The production values and trailer looked pretty darn good (and I didn't even understand what was going on...) Is there any particular reason why Japanese movies don't get released in the US the way US movies get released in Japan? Don't most US movies get released in Japanese when shown in Japan?

    --LP

    1. Re:Questions about CASSHERN... by Yorrike · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Most of the writing in the trailer was Japanese (no surprise), but the title (CASSHERN) was in English. Is there any significance to this? Is this a common practice?

      It's a common marketing ploy with Japanese products, marketed to Japanese people. As odd as it may sound, English writing and Roman characters are seen as exotic and unusual in Japan (or so it seems from what I've read regarding Japanese culture over the years).

      --

      Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?

  6. Re:BitTorrent by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's an Apple site . . I dont think they're lacking in the bandwidth.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  7. Fish by melatonin · · Score: 4, Funny

    The fish is our friend. Or maybe not; see if you find this useful. I got it off the story section of the Casshern site.

    As for there, the history which we walk the world where you walk the history which differs completely. The great war continues, as many as 50 years as for the world calls large Asian federal republic and European combination, it had divided into two camps. On end of the long fight, victory it did large Asian federal republic, controlling the east Asian Eurasian continent tract reached the point of. But, those which are obtained with the victory in devastation of human nature, the chemical weapon and the germ weapon, the sequela of the chemical injury and the virus and the radioactivity etc. which the nucleus brings were just the ground which becomes rough. Does the mankind sitting down, just receive loose end?

    Um, yeah.


    --
    Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
    1. Re:Fish by Quikah · · Score: 4, Informative

      I dont know if they put this up after you looked, but there is an english version of the story on the Casshern site after the Japanese version:

      An alternate world with an alternate history.

      The entire planet was divided between two opposing alliances.
      After fifty years of bitter warfare,
      the Greater Eastern Federation triumphs over
      the forces of Europa and gains dominion over the Eurasian continent.

      However, this is an empty victory.
      Years of chemical, biological and nuclear war have poisoned the land and
      left an exhausted population at the mercy of every pestilence and newly-mutated disease.

      It seems that there's little hope for humanity's future.
      Debate rages over the chances of finding some way to stave off
      the seemingly-inevitable decline of civilization.

      One man comes forward with a possible solution.
      Dr. Azuma is a geneticist who proposes a "neo-cell" treatment that
      can rejuvenate the body and regenerate humankind.
      He's driven in his studies by a desire to save his beloved wife, Midori,
      from the ravages of pollution-related disease.

      He appeals for funding to the government
      but the politicians in the Health Ministry turn him down,
      fearing that the new technology will threaten their entrenched powers.

      However, a sinister faction in the powerful military makes
      a secret offer to provide the support he needs to further his research.

      When an incident occurs in the lab that sends
      the Professor's "neo-cell" cloning experiment haywire,
      a race of mutant human beings (Shinzo Ningen) is unleashed upon the world.

      Instead of being the savior of mankind,
      the Professor's miraculous technology looks set to threaten its very existence...

      --
      Q.
  8. YESS, that's called Kyashan in Italy by godIsaDJ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Guys, that's gonna be great. The original anime was shown on italian tv about 10/15 years ago. It was called Kyashan which is phonetically pretty much the same. So, the story is that androids go mad and try to conquer the world (and pretty much succeed) the son of a brilling scientist which collaborated constructing the androids becomes a cyborg to save the world... There are a girl and a dog-cyborg that go around fighting with him... It sounds cheesy but the anime was *great* to say the least. Brilliant. And the trailer makes me hope for the best!!! Man what a news!!! I can't wait!!

  9. There is an anime movie as well by Casshan-Robot+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know if anyone knows this, but there is a movie called Casshan: Robot Hunter (anime) that is basically the story of the series, only much shorter (kinda like the Vision of Escaflowne was for Escaflowne). It was a pretty cool movie. Was the movie that got me into anime in the first place, actually.

    They finally got it on to DVD a few months ago. Very cool indeed.

    Hail Black King!

    --
    Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
  10. Eye opener by AmVidia+HQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can't read the Jap, but from other comments I gather it's a post fallout world with androids who want to conquer the world, and a cyborg who helped create the androids wanting to save it.

    Just watch the trailer, the eery graphics is SUPERB. The interweaving of live action into anime is intriguing, and from just the trailer I can already get a sense of the style and mood of the movie, with a strong feel of Dune (future tech + medieval setting).

    I will certainly want to see this in theater, if it's not Japan only. I'm in Canada.

    PS. The trailer seems to be surviving ./ pretty well, i'll post a BitTorrent link if it goes (or anyone can on the site in my sig, post it under the Releases)

    --
    VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
  11. Going to be a wild ride by Illserve · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects. Imaginations are going to run unchecked, and thousands of great stories that have been trapped in the realm of books and cartoon will be unleashed.

    LOTR, SpiderMan, and Xmen (as well as numerous other great CGI movies) were just the appetizer for the feast of fantasy we'll be dining on during the next 20 years. It's going to be fantastic.

  12. Re:weta... by imroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, I call BULLSHIT on your post. Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Are you just pulling numbers out of the air?

    Or perhaps a better explaination is that you're confusing internal representations with output formats. My younger brother tells me that LightWave uses some 192-bit internal format, but I'm not going to be some wannabe loser and claim that it creates "192-bit color". Gee, perhaps they're using floating point numbers. 3 x 64 = 192, oddly enough. Or maybe they're using single precision, which gives us 6 x 32 = 192. I don't know exactly what the six numbers are, perhaps RGB with a surface normal.

    Also, lets look at your numbers. Firstly, you're always counting an alpha channel. But alpha is only needed for compositing, not for final output. Secondly, most of us here are using 24-bit (8,8,8) or even 15/16-bit (5,5/6,5) true-colour display modes. Have you noticed any colour ringing or banding because of the lack of precision? I rarely have, and even then it was back when I used a 16-bit mode. 24-bit (i.e 8 bit components) is just fine for almost any work. About the only place it would be inadequant is perhaps doing X-ray or some other type of medical imaging. Now you're not only trying to tell us that Hollywood currently uses 32 bits per component but that the human eye can see 128 bit components? BULLSHIT. You do realise that for every bit you double the number of possible values? So 96-bit colour (3 x 32) has 16 million TIMES the number of values PER COMPONENT than 24-bit colour? My god, can you even comprehend how many different shades of colours that would produce?

    Sorry to come down hard on you, but I think you sound like just a confused adolescent with bit-inadequacy issues. You're confusing internal representations with output formats. For internal work, sure you need extra bits to guard against rounding errors. You'd probably scan any film with a 12 or 16 bit scanner (i.e 36 or 48 bit colour), render to either a similar precision or even HDRI formats (floating point, 96 or 192 bit colour) and keep any intermediate images at the highest precision you can. And for compositing you'd have an alpha channel (or three for chroma-key work). But when you process it for final output, you throw away the alpha (which hopefully equals 100% by that stage) and round everything down. For DVD, that means converting to the YCrCb colour space, subsampling the croma channels to half size (i.e 4:2:2 sampling) and encoding. For a film "printer", it might take 36 (3x12) or 48 (3x16) bit RGB, or maybe just 24 bit.

    </rant> :P
  13. Parallax effect..... by reality-bytes · · Score: 4, Informative

    What they've gone for here that gives a good Anime 'feel' is a 'Parallax' effect of filming; something the Matrix did not employ.

    The basis of this idea is that in the animated animes, the forground would be moved frame by frame in relation to the backround moving in the opposite direction. - This is effectively an easy way for animators to quickly produce the effect of the camera moving within a scene.

    The effect in this film appears to be replicated by actually moving a camera with a telephoto lense across the scene.

    All in all, from the trailer, the effect appears good and in combination with other anime-esque effects although I could see how it would become annoying in live-action if over-used.

    The motion effects in anime nearly all stem from the animators tricks to avoid having to constantly redraw cells when they can just move them around.

    Its quite an amusing transposition of techniques to watch.

    --
    Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
  14. And here is The Matrix vs Darkcity by laddhebert · · Score: 5, Informative
    And here's a photoanalysis of The Matrix and Dark City with side by side photo comparisons of the two movies. http://rob.mitsi.com/movies/comparisons/tm-dc_imag es.htm

    What is this...object oriented movie making?

    -L

    --
    Don't Panic.
  15. Golden age of movies by mariox19 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled...

    I agree, though I believe it goes far beyond special effects.

    A lot of people would point to the "Old Hollywood" as the golden age of movie making, but I believe we are on the threshold of what will be seen as the real golden age.

    Movie making, special effects or not, is becoming much, much cheaper. What we're going to see in the coming years is an explosion of non-Hollywood movies (U.S. and non-U.S.) that are first-rate in terms of polish. So-called "independent" films are going to look as good as any other and have far more impact than they do now. Hollywood will no longer enjoy the position it has enjoyed since its inception.

    There is a wealth of talent out there -- actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, makeup and set designers, computer graphics artists -- that exist on the fringes (especially the actors, writers and directors), ignored by the money-chasing, unimagintative, group-think of the Hollywood studios. The talents of these professionals will finally be able to find a vehicle for their expression that will have a world-wide impact.

    Even more amazing than filmakers being unshackled from the laws of physics will be the results of filmakers being unshackled from the "laws" of MGM, Newline, UA and so forth.

    --

    quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.

  16. Re:U.S. Release? by SubtleNuance · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Enjoy a movie like this? Are you kidding? OF COURSE!

    The USA has been exporting massive amounts of 'cultural products' for the last 100years. To everyone *outside the USA* (or english speaking countries), it is in a 'second language', yet, its still they eat it up.

    Now, consider this trailer again, imagine that it wasnt in Japanese -- what would you be thinking of this movie? It frankly looks terrific. If this movie were coming out of America, it would be MASSIVE. One of these days soon IMHO, Japan is going to drop a blockbuster on the USA. Its cultural products are very much palatable to the American Cultural Sensibilities (for bad as well as good, the USA->Japan post WWII influence is imense) -- Japan is very much due to have its own modern Culture play well in Peoria.

    Maybe this movie is it, maybe not, but Japan is becoming a more influencial player in international 'style' and culture. And really, being a fan of Anime is not a pre-requisite. Im sure this movie will stand well no its onw.

  17. Out of the kindness of my heart, here's a script by gnownaym · · Score: 5, Informative

    .. for the trailer. Translated and everything! (except for the one line I can't really decide on) 00:00:02 I'd like to present, to this body, one of our accomplishments. 00:00:13 It's name is "neo-biology." [more like "newly created bio"] 00:00:17 You've made all these already? 00:00:19 I've heard your wife is ill... 00:00:25 What are you going to do about Luna? 00:00:28 I can't stay alone in a place like this when my friends are fighting. 00:00:30 Cause unknown! 00:00:31 "Neo-biology"is still incomplete?! 00:00:38 What are you saying? 00:00:40 That the military is moving. [its forces, etc, whatever] 00:00:44 I wonder why people fight... 00:00:46 What have you done? 00:00:49 [The line I can't make heads or tails of] 00:00:53 I'm going... 00:00:57 ...to annihilate the human race. 00:01:03 Code 2-0-6! 00:01:04 Hurry! DO IT! 00:01:13 I will save you. 00:01:17 Who the hell are you? 00:01:22 I'm not human anymore!! 00:01:35 One life, cast aside 00:01:39 and reborn with an invulnerable body 00:01:41 will strike and destroy the iron demons. 00:01:45 If Casshern doesn't do it, 00:01:47 who will?