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The story
At Canada’s Ottawa International Animation Festival, the feature film “We Are Aliens” won the Grand Prize, the festival’s top honor. The festival is considered one of the world’s three major animation festivals, and word of mouth had reportedly been building even before the film’s release. Reactions on 5ch were largely positive about the win, but there were also notable questions about why no animation festival of this scale exists in Japan — supposedly an “anime superpower” — along with differing opinions on whether the character designs would appeal to Japanese audiences.
“An absolutely incredible masterpiece” — word of mouth spreads for “We Are Aliens,” winner of the Grand Prize at a Canadian animation festival
Mon, Sep 28, 4:00 PM
At the 50th Ottawa International Animation Festival in Canada, one of the world’s three major animation festivals, “We Are Aliens” won the Grand Prize in the Feature Film category. A new “friends” trailer depicting “those days” has also been released.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
They cast a famous actress as a voice actor, and he's handsome enough to make a living off his looks.
If Japanese people prioritize personal relationships above all, they're not cut out for running a competition — they're not rule-makers.
They want to be the ones evaluated, but they don't have the ability to evaluate foreign work.
Does that mean humans on Earth are aliens too?
Man, you're dumb lol
Way too many people here mixing up a film festival with a film award lol
Word-of-mouth ratings are actually really high in Japan too
At least it's nowhere near as bad as, say, "Scarlet"
That said, Japan's also the country where "Poupelle 2" gets overwhelmingly high scores (4.2 on Eiga.com), so online word of mouth here isn't that reliable to begin with
Exactly
Watched the trailer and the characters are kind of creepy-looking — it's killing my urge to go see it
What are you, a kid?
Anime isn't just lolita-style art, you know.
someone wrote "a masterpiece I never want to see again" lol
What's up with that?
Is it one of those stories that digs into the darkness of the human heart? 😅😅😅
Glad it's not "2 hours' hard labor, 1,800 yen fine" (a riff on movie-review jokes that mock a bad film's runtime and ticket price like a court sentence)
Something like "Grave of the Fireflies," maybe?
Is Japanese too hard for you?
Total opposite, actually
An ordinary boy grows into an ordinary adult, while the super-popular boy (who has ADHD) falls out of school society as he grows up
"Water, please." (a nod to the classic deadpan-robotic alien-voice gag)
I thought it'd be about a happy childhood, but it's actually about two boys' relationship, conflicts, and feuds from childhood all the way into adulthood
That's a plot you see all the time in live-action movies and TV dramas
Japanese anime and film have basically lost the ability to portray that kind of ordinary story anymore, haven't they
Well, it's different from manga artists who clawed their way through a brutal "World Martial Arts Tournament" of talent to get where they are (i.e., the fierce competition of the manga industry)
Ah, "The Mysterians" (Chikyu Boeigun), right?
Oh, if you mean "Demon Slayer," it lost
— to a K-pop girl group (apparently referring to the animated film "KPop Demon Hunters")
That's basically just live-action at that point
Classic Ralph Bakshi move lol
I'd think it's precisely because it's drawn as anime that you get that slightly-detached-from-reality feeling
Quit just criticizing and go watch "100 Meters" (Hyakuemu) for once.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HR1_tuWbkAAT28s.jpg
Background and Talking Points
The Ottawa International Animation Festival is referenced in the thread as “one of the world’s three major animation festivals,” a group often cited alongside France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Croatia’s Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films. These festivals judge artistic merit rather than box-office draw, so their evaluation criteria differ from domestic name recognition or ticket sales. In the thread, reactions split between surprise that the film won despite not being a hot topic of word of mouth in Japan, and pushback pointing out that winning a festival prize is different from winning a film award or scoring a box-office hit — a mix-up that often comes up when comparing overseas festival wins to domestic buzz. Differing opinions on the character designs and the rotoscope-like animation technique were also cited as factors shaping how people reacted.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Geisokuho+) thread “[Movie] “An Incredible Masterpiece” — Word of Mouth Spreads for “We Are Aliens,” Winner of the Grand Prize at a Canadian Animation Festival.”
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