AWN’s anime columnist Andrew Osmond discusses the much-extended version of Sunao Katabuchi’s acclaimed 2016 war drama film, ‘In This Corner of the World,’ now available on Crunchyroll; but first he asks, ‘When did animated films get so long?’
This article is about a very long animated feature film, .A war drama directed by Sunao Katabuchi, it was released back in 2016 and runs to more than two hours.Well reviewed on international release, the original film is on multiple online platforms.
Recently, though, a newer version of the film has become available on Crunchyroll.Renamed , it’s an epic of nearly hours, and a contender for the title of longest animated film ever.I discuss both versions below.
But first I’d like to reflect on the phenomenon of the epic-length animated film.Rise of the epic Not long ago, one thing animated features seemed to share was they were .True, Disney’s 1940 was an early exception (around two hours, depending on the cut).
But it was an anthology with no linking narrative, and partly in live-action.Disney wouldn’t release an all-animated feature that reached 90 minutes for another half-century; that was 1992’s .Paradoxically, its predecessor exceeded that when its extended version was released in 2002, with the song “Human Again.” Still, 90 to 95 minutes seemed the upper limit for Hollywood animated films through the next decade.
You might think it was the ideal balance between cost considerations – budgets were climbing – and Hollywood’s perception of what audiences wanted from a “cartoon” film.But the limit stretched with the advent of Pixar.ran 100 minutes in 2003; the next year’s set a major precedent at 115 minutes.
It was a superhero film, anticipating what that genre would do to runtimes in animation live-action.Skip to 2023, and ran an exhausting and thrilling 140 minutes.Even at its end, it was only midway through its story, to be completed in the upcoming .
That film’s release date (and year) is TBC, but surely cinemas will offer double bills when it opens, letting viewers immerse themselves in four or five hours of Miles Morales.Or bills, bundling in the first at a relatively modest 117 minutes.An anime tradition Beyond Hollywood, I can only find unofficial lists of long animated films, including a Wikipedia page.
It’s clear, though, that most of the really long features are anime.That’s been true for decades, going back to 1969’s adult film (128 minutes), or 1978’s space opera (151 minutes!).Today, anime viewers are introduced to epic anime films through Ghibli: (133 minutes) and (137 minutes).
Of course, anime films are far cheaper by the minute than Disney or Pixar’s.Moreover, lengthy runtimes aren’t inherently .The two Ghibli films often counted as the studio’s best – and – each run under 90 minutes.
So does one of the most seminal non-Ghibli films, .Many splendid anime features are far shorter: , , last year’s .The idea that animated stories can be epic is well established in Japan.
But that’s less to do with long films than with the far longer TV anime series, some telling an integrated story over dozens or hundreds of episodes.But film and TV animation have also blurred together in Japan for decades, far closer than in America.I’m not just talking about spinoffs and sequels.
Some of the films on top of the Wikipedia list are spun off from series, but they use entirely new animation, barring flashbacks.That accounts for (155 minutes) and (162 minutes).However, many Japanese features are compiled from TV series.
Or very often, they’re of TV footage and new material.Other films are compiled from serials released to video, or previously serialized cinema films.The 2024 film was abridged from an earlier film trilogy.
This practice began in the 1960s and 1970s (I wrote an article on it).Back then, TV anime were routinely re-edited as films in Japan, often to go into holiday cinema packages for children.Those packages have gone, but the recycling is embedded; it’s one practice that distinguishes anime from other media.
At least, it used to.Anime’s blurring of TV and film anticipates today’s Hollywood, where superhero films are linked together like cliffhanger serials, fit for streaming binges.You can argue that “epic” film lengths have become redundant.
So what if runs three hours? It’s the second half of a two-part film, and they’re both just part of a serial that’s of hours long.Some anime function that way too.A prime case is the lavish , a remake of the 1970s space opera.
From 2012 into 2013, it was screened in Japanese cinemas as a seven-part serial, each feature-length episode shown a few weeks after the last.In contrast, – which was the fourth part of a film series that was itself a quasi-sequel to a TV show and was released on Prime Video in August 2021 – had a sense of individual occasion when it came out, because it was released nine years after the previous “episode.” And of course, there are still epic anime recycled from serials.That brings us back to In This Corner Almost all anime directors, even those hailed as “cinematic,” work in TV for large parts of their careers.
(Makoto Shinkai, director of , is an exception, but a one-off.) Sunao Katabuhi is notable, though, in that his TV work stands in stark contrast to his cinema.On television, Katabuchi is known for his outrageous crime anime , screened in 2006 (plus a sequel for video).It’s a sometimes-parodically hardboiled series, mostly set in a gang-ruled Thai city.
The shoot-outs are endless; the heavies range from a woman Terminator in a maid’s dress, to cherubic children taking the show into all-out horror.It’s brilliant, and long overdue for a revival.Yet Katabuchi also creates lyrical films in a post-Ghibli tradition.
He was down to direct Ghibli’s ; even after Miyazaki took over, Katabuchi kept an Assistant Director credit.Since then, he’s specialized in films about gentle, joyful protagonists, placed in hardship.His still underrated (2009) is a delightful film about rural childhood in postwar Japan.
It has shades of , but puts more weight on children’s play, imagination and empathy.– the original, running 129 minutes – was his next film.It’s not obviously epic material.
The backdrop is World War II, but the film is an intimate story of a young woman, Suzu, who marries into a family living on a hill near Hiroshima.For much of the film, the war is a distant, almost abstract prospect.Even when Suzu’s brother dies in battle, the army sends a boxed rock in lieu of his remains.
For a long stretch, the film is a domestic drama about Suzu trying to fit in with her new family, which is hard for this scatter-brained daydreamer and natural artist.I confess I find the story’s pacing a chore sometimes, though it has analogues in two of Isao Takahata’s films, and .Notably all these films take the perspectives of imaginative women, living within the restrictions of Japanese society.
But though I like Takahata’s films, I found myself chafing at the’s leisureliness, especially in its first half.Many scenes feel like separate chapters, complete with bathetic spoken punchlines.And yet, as the film goes on and the characters’ lives become harder and darker, Suzu’s story becomes as immersive as a punctiliously-mapped Middle Earth.
The defining scene, about midway through both versions, is when Suzu finally sees enemy planes over her home, flak exploding round them like fireworks.Then her artist’s eye takes over and she sees a painter’s hand splashing the sky.Part of Katabuchi’s intent with the film was to recover a past not just lost but vaporized on August 6, 1945.
In the first minutes, the child Suzu is brought by boat to Hiroshima’s bustling heart, to the district that will be the epicenter of oblivion.It could be a rebuff to Shinkai’s , released in the same year, which imagined putting a Japanese catastrophe “right” by magic.When I reviewed for a magazine, I said I found more compelling as a film.
But, I hedged, Katabuchi’s film was closer to real life.The Long Version The longer version of Katabuchi’s film was released in Japan in 2019.I caught an English-subtitled retrospective screening at the 2023 Tokyo International Film Festival, with Katabuchi presenting.
Already long, his film was extended by another forty minutes, taking its runtime to 169 minutes, or a fraction under .Of course, all the animation was newly-created.This was far more than restoring one reluctantly-abandoned set-piece, like .
Rather, it was a rethink of the whole story.Notably, the extended film does show off more of Hiroshima’s lost buildings and heritage.The new scenes are almost entirely character-driven (an exception is one sumptuously-animated sequence where the characters endure a typhoon).
Their purpose is to throw a wholly new light on Suzu’s arranged marriage in the film, to a diffident youth called Shusaku.In the original version, they have trouble connecting.There’s a central scene where Shusaku practically tells his wife to sleep with her brasher childhood friend (a sailor unlikely to survive the war), when he visits their home.
The original film also has a supporting character, an elegant, kindly woman called Rin, who befriends Suzu.She works in a brothel in a nearby town; her circumstances are vague, though she poignantly warns Suzu that she shouldn’t come back to this area.And that’s all there seems to be to Rin’s corner of the film, except for a downbeat much later.
But in the extended version, Rin is central.Suzu realizes Shusaku had once been Rin’s customer, and he fell in love with her back then.There’s no suggestion that he’s been unfaithful since his marriage, but Suzu can’t help seeing the beautiful Rin, far more refined than she, as her unbeatable rival.
In the shorter cut, the film’s sexual references are so subtle that many children wouldn’t notice them (including a funny moment involving, of all things, an umbrella).But the long version adds an unhappy bedroom scene between Suzu and Shusaku; not gratuitous, but rather a doing-away with euphemisms.The other extra scenes are largely extended talks involving Suzu, Rin and her brothel co-worker, who’s as brightly sad as Rin herself.
Compared with much of the “original” film, these scenes sedately staged – for all ’s leisurely pace, much of its imagery is whip-fast.But the new scenes are neither cheap nor boring.Beautifully written, tenderly drawn, they’re set against gorgeous backdrops; a snow-draped town, a heaven of blossom.
They show the value of a tiny reconciliation in a world of conflict and, like much of the rest of, they blend two human constants: kindness and pain.At one point, Rin helps Suzu to apply lipstick.As she does, she remarks without malice that the prettiest female corpses get treated the best after air raids.
I saw ’s “shorter” version long before I saw the extended one.As such, I can’t say how a newcomer would respond if they saw the longer film first.I suspect, though, that the added drama would offset the film’s marathon length.
Seeing the longer film second, I found it illuminating; an effective sequel, and an answer to a hidden mystery (and in small ways too, paying off a seemingly imagined childhood meeting).Beyond their plot satisfactions, the new scenes are remarkably humane; the film’s soul grows together with Suzu’s.They’re worth the extra time.
One footnote: As of writing, Katabuchi is still preparing his next film, which looks stylistically congruent with .Called , it’s another historical drama, about tenth-century Kyoto during an epidemic.Here’s the trailer: Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media.
His email is [email protected].
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