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The Last Blossom Wins 2025 Scotland Loves Anime Judges and Audience Awards
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The festival released the following statement from the jurors:
"In the voting for the Judges Award, The Last Blossom received double the number of nominations of its nearest competitor. The judges praised it for its tight plotting, balanced storytelling, and incisive evocation of the late Showa era, and its thoughtful empathy with a cast that seemed believable. For its heartwarming tale of love, loss and redemption, they conferred The Last Blossom with this year's award."
In the audience voting, The Last Blossom scored 4.35 out of 5, ahead of 100 Meters (4.16), ChaO (4.10) and All You Need Is Kill (3.83). The audience comments include:
"Bittersweet film with an interesting way of telling the story... A thoughtful, sensitive film packed with charm and imagery... Beautifully animated drama about people making wrong choices... A beautiful story about what we would do for the ones we love... Cleverly and sincerely executed, with just the right tone... An immensely good example of how big a small film can... Heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time... Pretty much an animated [Takeshi] Kitano film."
The Annecy Film Festival described the film's story of the original anime film, directed by Baku Kinoshita and written by Kadzuya Konomoto,
"Autumn 2023. Akutsu, an elderly inmate serving life in prison, is on the verge of a lonely death in his single cell. A talking Housenka flower says to him, "What a rotten life you had." Akutsu starts reflecting on his past. Summer 1986. Akutsu is living with Nana and her son Kensuke in a shabby apartment with a garden full of Housenkas. It is the tale of a one-night victorious comeback by a dying yakuza, and his family's story told by a flower that blooms in prison."
The 2024 Scotland Loves Anime festival ran from October 31 to November 2 in Glasgow, November 7 to 9 in London and November 10 to 16 in Edinburgh.
Source: Email communication from Scotland Loves Anime.
