Special Report: Tokyo Project Gathering In-Depth: Be Rockin'

By Jonah Morgan

Story Summary is as follows: He was happy whenever he had a guitar. Shun was an ordinary guitarist, the type who was likely to be found anywhere. He worked for a business company when he was 27 years old, but he still couldn't give up his dream to be a musician. One day he came across a mysterious woman, Kyoko, who proposed to form a new band and get him out of his current situation. Behind her back there was an expert guitarist, Terada, whom Shun respected. He admired Shun's undeveloped and hidden talent. Shun's mind was wavering between Kyoko with the great talent which he could not resist and his girlfriend Kaori who felt uneasy. All 3's feelings and relationships soon got complicated and fell at the mercy of the huge vibration of rock. Is Rock Alive Or Dead?

As with all the presentations, attendees were treated to a short trailer first off. Deep themes of a pure rock & roll story make themselves evident from the start. The 40 years between 2007 and 1967's Haight-Ashbury district / Francisco "Summer Of Love" pilgrimage is drawn in the opening statement. The animation is immediately recognizable as fully digital: 3D polygons cell shaded and colored in a way as to make them look similar to traditional 2D anime. The music itself seems integral to the overall plot, a wide variety of sounds from the different acts and elements of a love triangle are evident. Shun's struggle from amateur guitarist to actually finding his own unique "sound" are made known to viewers. The trailer ends with a bizarre cliffhanger. Kyoko makes a reference to wanting to start over and then collapses on stage (as the background transforms to a wash of psychedelic colors) to the shock of onlookers.

The lights went up, like with most of the presentations I couldn't gauge much of a crowd reaction to this project, everyone there seemed pretty stoney faced, indifferent and business oriented. Producer Tadashi Matsuyama took the podium and gave a short statement in Japanese. I arranged a private meeting with him on Wednesday, October 25th at TIFFCOM. We hit it off pretty well from the start, he asked if I was a musician because of the long hair. Indeed, long hair can tell you a lot about a person's lifestyle and help you establish a rapport with likeminded individuals (regardless of nationality) pretty quickly, and as it turned out, we both had long hair and shared a very special place in our heart for music. Tadashi made his passion and enthusiasm for music very clear to me, he's a guitarist himself today and supposedly one of the most knowledgeable music experts working in the Japan's budding CG industry.

The musical elements in Be Rockin' are obviously sourced by the eye a true rock and roller. The series subtitle reads "Dedicated To Woman Tone". Woman Tone is a term known to any experienced rock & roll guitarist, used to refer a distinct sound pioneered in the mid-late 1960's by Eric Clapton. I asked about the extreme detail in the guitars the characters used. Matsuyama told me they are based on real models created by Japan's #1 guitar manufacturer Tokai. For the series, ANON acquired the actual rights to use the likenesses of some of the maker's models. Shun, the male lead appears to play a NLS70F VF. Some of Japan's top up and coming rock talent will participate in the soundtrack including Aisa, the rise 4 surprise, Dr. K and Fuzzy Control. The trailer also shows the sillouette of a mystery "Japanese Famous Charismatic Guitarist" who has accepted to participate. We'll end the mystery and tell you who he is: legendary Japanese Rock guitarist Hisato "Char" Takenaka. For a possible American release I was told the Japanese musicians may be substituted with well known US bands. I mentioned the growing popularity of Japanese music among American fans and told him they should consider keeping the Japanese acts in and giving it a shot.