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'Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms' Manga Gets Animated Projection Mapping Work
posted on by Alex Mateo
A public relations event for the newly announced Hiroshima International Peace Cultural Festival on Wednesday presented an animated work that blends projection mapping and music for Fumiyo Kouno's Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Yūnagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni) manga.
The first Hiroshima International Peace Cultural Festival will be held on August 1-28, 2022, and it will then take place every two years. The event will feature media such as animation and music, and it will also host international competitions.
The manga's story follows two young women in a family dealing with the aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic bombing — a woman in 1955 and her niece decades later. The original manga divided the story between the "Town of Evening Calm" story in Hiroshima in 1955, and two other "Country of Cherry Blossoms" stories set in Tokyo's Nakano ward in 1987 and 2004.
The manga inspired a live-action television adaptation in 2018. The live-action version moved the "Country of Cherry Blossoms" story to present day 2018 with an original story added.
The original 2003-2004 manga won the Grand Prize at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's Shinsei Award in 2005. After Last Gasp Publishing and jaPRESS released the manga in North America, the series won one of New York Magazine's 2007 Culture Awards. The manga also inspired a live-action film in 2007.
Kouno, a Hiroshima native, also published the In This Corner of the World manga, which similarly centers on a woman's life at both Kure and Hiroshima. That manga received a live-action television film in 2011, and an anime film adaptation by Sunao Katabuchi and MAPPA in November 2016. Shout! Factory and Funimation Films screened the film in the United States and Canada. The film went on to win the Fujimoto Award, the Daijin (Minister) Prize from the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Hiroshima Peace Film Award at the Hiroshima International Film Festival, Kinema Jumpo magazine's best Japanese movie of the year, the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, and the Jury Award in the Feature Film Category at Annecy. Seven Seas Entertainment released the manga in October 2017.
Source: Shinhorishima Telecasting
