Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of critically acclaimed anime series’ Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, will be starting up a new anime series titled Kids On The Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon).
An interview of Watanabe by Twitch.com revealed that he was involved in several projects and we would be hearing more from him soon. The story of Kids On The Slope steps away from the guns, swords and action that Watanabe has done in the past, and is taking a new direction towards the ‘slice of life’ genre:
Nishimi Kaoru has moved from city to city and school to school because of his father’s job. So the first day at his new school was just routine for him. Being intellectual and the new transfer student, he has always been seen as an outcast and all Kaoru had to do was bare it until the next time he moved. But things were slightly different this time. First, he started to get close to the class president, Mukae Ritsuko, and, secondly, unlikely as it seemed, grew closer to Kawabuchi Sentaro. Sentaro was infamous for getting into fights, skipping class and was an overall bad boy. Strangely enough, the three of them find common ground in music, namely jazz, and Kaoru finds himself actually enjoying the new town.
This new anime series scheduled to air in April as a part of FujiTV’s noitaminA lineup. This new series is an adaptation of a popular manga and will be reuniting Watanabe with the music composer for Cowboy Bebop, Yoko Kanno. The online teaser is available online, and it looks pretty solid.
In the past, Watanabe’s work has seen him blend different styles together to create something unique as an anime. Cowboy Bebop is a prime example of this which mixes Cowboy Westerns, New York film noir, jazz music, Hong Kong action movies and having the entire series set in outer space. It would be interesting to see if he will blend in Western jazz music with Japanese school culture to produce another unique series.
Check out the teaser of the new series below, what do you think of it?
Undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University from Hong Kong, joined AX3 in August 2011. Writes about movies, music, current events and oddities. Likes spicy food, anime, guitar and piano. Only weakness: peanuts.
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