Scotland Loves Anime: 2022 Preview

The term 'Isekai' refers to a type of anime in which the protagonist is suddenly transported out of our regular world and into a fantastical new one. Step through the doors of the Cameo in Edinburgh or the Glasgow Film Theatre in time for this month’s Scotland Loves Anime festival, and you’ll get to know exactly what that feels like.

You’ll be able to take a trip into the future with Break of Dawn (23 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Cameo) and its tale of one boy and his robot. Or tumble back into the past for Inu-Oh (21 Oct, GFT) a psychedelic rock opera set in 14th-century Japan. Or explore how past and future connect with The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes (22 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Cameo) as a grieving student comes across a magical tunnel that can grant him his heart’s deepest desire but only if he’s willing to give up several years of his own life in return.

Of course, sometimes the real adventure is the friends we make along the way, and this year’s festival has plenty of more grounded dramas as well. Goodbye, Don Glees! (23 Oct, GFT; 30 Oct, Cameo) sees a group of misfit boys heading into the woods for a Stand By Me-style coming-of-age adventure. While they lose each other among the trees, the girls of Hula Fulla Dance (28 Oct, Cameo) get more and more in step over the course of a life-changing hula dance campaign. In Blue Thermal (22 Oct, GFT; 30 Oct, Cameo), Tamaki explores the feminine urge to deal with a romantic disaster by developing an all-consuming passion for gliding while the rebellious youngsters of Seven Days War (30 Oct, Cameo) escape the grinding pressure of parental supervision by camping out in an abandoned factory. 

Goodbye, Don Glees!

For better or worse, the place that most of us disappear into is usually the strange world of the internet. Thanks to this year’s Digital Realms strand – put together by the festival’s inaugural guest curator and all-round animation aficionado Kambole Campbell – we’ll be taking a trip back to the early days of the net through a series of classic films including Perfect Blue (24 Oct, Cameo) from the legendary Satoshi Kon. The strand will also feature the first three episodes of the late 90s cyberpunk series Serial Experiments Lain (25 Oct, Cameo) in which emails from the other side turn a young girl’s life upside down.

If you were lucky enough to see Belle in all its whale-singing glory earlier this year then you know what it’s like to be hardwired into Mamoru Hosoda’s exhilarating imagination, and the Digital Realms strand will also give you a chance to check out one of his most celebrated trips into the weird, wide world of the web with Summer Wars (26 Oct, Cameo). Finally, Patlabor: The Movie (27 Oct, Cameo) paints an all-too-real picture of the future as the world is ravaged by environmental disasters, forcing them to resort to drastic, giant robot-based measures to survive.

And if giant robots are your thing then, naturally, you’re in the right place. Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island (21 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Cameo) is here to provide all the bot-on-bot action you could ask for, though if you prefer your mechanical showdowns with a side-order of existential despair then there's Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01 (23 Oct, GFT; 28 Oct, Cameo), which brings the iconic series to a spectacular, soul-shattering close.

And finally, this year’s mystery film has been revealed as the newest work from the brilliant Naoko Yamada, The Garden of Remembrance (29 Oct, Cameo). The film itself still seems pretty mysterious but with the director of A Silent Voice at the helm, the chance to catch this ahead of its full release next year is not to be missed.

Whatever you turn up for though, you’ll find that the 2022 edition of Scotland Loves Anime is ready and waiting to whisk you off to somewhere you’ve never seen before and that you’ll never quite forget.

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Scotland Loves Anime: 21-23 Oct, GFT, Glasgow; 24-30 Oct, Cameo, Edinburgh
For full screening details and tickets, head to www.lovesanimation.com