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Freedom Project is a Japanese promotional project by Nissin Foods Cup Noodles for their 35th anniversary in 2006. As part of the project, the 7-part OVA series, titled Freedom, was commissioned with and designed by Katsuhiro Otomo (of the anime film Steamboy and the manga Akira and its film adaptation) serving as the character and mecha designer. The series is directed by Shuhei Morita, creator of the award-winning animation short Kakurenbo, and is authored by celebrated writer Dai Satō, Katsuhiko Chiba and Yuuichi Nomura. The series openly displays its sponsor's product placement in numerous scenes in which characters are shown consuming Nissin Cup Noodles.
The OVA is animated and produced by Sunrise and distributed by Bandai Visual. "Freedom Committee" is the collective term used for the entire creative team behind Freedom, which includes animators and production staff members who have previously worked on Steamboy.
The theme song for the series, titled "This Is Love", is performed by popular Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada. A second song, "Kiss & Cry", Hikaru Utada's 19th Japanese single, was used for Nissin's fifth television commercial for Freedom, which began airing in Japan starting April 20, 2007.
More than 160 years have passed since then. In Eden, children complete their compulsory education program when they are 15 years old. They are then integrated into the society as citizens. During their brief moratorium they are granted freedom. Like other boys, Takeru decides to take part in a race with his friends using machines particular to the Moon, called "Vehicle". But what distinguishes Takeru is that he has constructed his own vehicle. When his vehicle catches fire on a public road he is sentenced to 10 hours of "volunteer" work outside the dome, where he discovers the remains of a small crashed capsule bearing photographs and articles seemingly sent from Earth. Structures visible in the background identify the location they were taken as the Kennedy launch facility in Florida.
Infatuated with a young woman in the photograph, Takeru attempts to research conditions on Earth and finds that the library's information on the home planet is heavily censored. Furthermore, nobody is permitted to travel far enough from the dome over the lunar surface to get within visual range. He discovers a small enclave of people living in a facility outside of Eden's centralized control, and after befriending the enclave's leader is given access to a moon rover with sufficient range to get a view of Earth. He sees that the Earth is blue; it has recovered from the disaster that befell it and is now habitable again. The authorities of Eden pursue Takeru, attempting to suppress this discovery, but Takeru and his friend Bismarck manage to commandeer an old "escape" rocket and leave Eden to explore Earth first hand.
The escape rocket's capsule comes down slightly off course, landing in the ruins of Las Vegas, and Takeru and Bismarck use Takeru's vehicle to make the overland trek across the United States.
Publicity for the series began April 11, 2006, with large banners and posters featuring concept sketches of the lead characters Takeru, Kazuma and their vehicles lining Tokyo's busiest train stations, such as Shibuya Station and Shinjuku Station — the latter being the busiest railway station in the world with 3 million transiting passengers every day. These initial pencil-work posters were later replaced by fully coloured, CG created versions with finished background art, giving the effect of a work-in-progress animation piece being completed.
At the same time, 30-second television spots were shown on TV — short trailers providing a glimpse of the story to unfold in Freedom 1. The 5th advertising spot is currently being shown on Japanese television [April 20, 2007], and reveals major plot advances from Freedom 3. Some of these spots were made available on the limited-edition Freedom Previsited DVD (see release notes below).
A special Freedom Project page, a collaboration between Yahoo! Japan and Nissin, will also stream every episode of the series one week before its DVD release date.
Print ads showcasing Katsuhiro Otomo's sketches for the OVA were also released in magazines nationwide. Shortly before the Freedom 1 DVD release, many popular media, manga and animation magazines ran articles for the OVA, featuring mecha design descriptions and interviews with staff members.
The largely successful publicity campaign for Freedom Project was very well received by fans of Katsuhiro Otomo and animation fans in Japan, who saw him returning to his strengths of designing stylish mecha and memorable characters.
It seemed that Otomo was concerned with the production of this work overall and was the director at first, but was over for participation only for character and mechanic design after all. According to the announcement of Nissin side, nonparticipation of Otomo is on schedule, Otomo confesses having resigned this work, or has refused the comment with some magazines.
Freedom 7 had been planned for an August 2008 release, but as a result of Toshiba ceasing production of the HD DVD format in February 2008, the release was canceled. Freedom 6 was the final title to be released on HD DVD.
FREEDOM Futtomākudeizu is a series of 3 novels which follows Kazuma's, one of the main characters, side of the story. It is a side-story that runs parallel to the main storyline, and also introduces characters not seen in the anime (, , ).
Freedom Scenarios delves into the making of the OVA series. It is written in Japanese and divided into 2 books, 0-3 and 4-7 respectively. Both books contain scenarios (the script for each episode), interviews with writers, production crew, voice actors, concept and production art, and a detailed encyclopedia for terms related to Freedom (, ).
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