0608 – Steamboy (2004)

spacetime coordinates: 1863 Russian Alaska // 1866 Manchester –  London

Steamboy (Japanese: スチームボーイ Hepburn: Suchīmubōi) is a 2004 Japanese animated steampunk action film produced by Sunrise, directed and co-written by Katsuhiro Otomo, his second major anime release, following Akira. The film was released in Japan on July 17, 2004. Steamboy is one of the most expensive Japanese animated movies made to date. Additionally, the film was in production for ten years and utilized more than 180,000 drawings and 440 CG cuts.

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0607 – Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

spacetime coordinates: 2035  Shanghai Tokyo Los Angeles Sydney / Siberia

Pacific Rim Uprising is a 2018 American science fiction film directed by Steven S. DeKnight (in his feature-film directorial debut), with a screenplay by DeKnight, Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder, and T.S. Nowlin, from a story by DeKnight and Nowlin. It is the sequel to the 2013 film Pacific Rim, with Guillermo del Toro, the director of the original, serving as a producer. The sequel stars John Boyega (also making his producer debut), as well as Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, and Zhang Jin, with Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman returning from the original film.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a springboard for a cinematic universe, where DeKnight revealed “If enough people show up to this, we’ve already talked about the plot of the third movie, and how the end of the third movie would expand the universe to a Star Wars/Star Trek-style [franchise or series] where you can go in many, many different directions… You can go main canon, you can go spin-offs, you can go one-offs. Yeah, that’s the plan.”  DeKnight also talked about the possibility of a crossover with the MonsterVerse,  as co-writer T.S. Nowlin is a member of its writers room.

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605 – The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is a 2015 American documentary film directed and written by Stanley Nelson Jr. The film combines archival footage and interviews with surviving Panthers and FBI agents to tell the story of the revolutionary black organization Black Panther Party. It is Nelson Jr.’s eighth film to premiere at Sundance. The film is the first of a three-part series of documentary films about African-American history America Revisited. It will be followed by Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and The Slave Trade: Creating a New World.

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604 – Black Panther (2018)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_(film)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/

afrofuturism   495

0603 – A Letter to Momo / Momo e no tegami (2011)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s Shio Island (汐島 Shiojima) –  Seto Inland Sea

A Letter to Momo (Japanese: ももへの手紙 Hepburn: Momo e no Tegami) is a 2011 Japanese anime drama film produced by Production I.G and distributed by Kadokawa Pictures. The film was written and directed by Hiroyuki Okiura and stars an ensemble cast featuring Karen Miyama, Yuka, Toshiyuki Nishida, Chō and Kōichi Yamadera. In A Letter to Momo, 11-year-old Momo Miyaura moves with her mother to a small island town after her father dies. When she arrives, she encounters three goblins that others cannot see who help her to cope with the loss of her father and the changes in her life.

“Sweet, sad, and visually striking, A Letter to Momo is a hand-drawn experience for animation fans to savor.”

imdb   manga

0602 – The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

spacetime coordinates: 2000’s Tokyo, Japan

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女 Toki o Kakeru Shōjo) is a 2006 Japanese-animated science fiction comedy/drama film produced by Madhouse, directed by Mamoru Hosoda and written by Satoko Okudera. Released by Kadokawa Herald Pictures, the film is a loose sequel to the 1967 novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui and shares the basic premise of a young girl who gains the power of time travel, but with a different story and characters than the novel. Riisa Naka voices teenager Makoto Konno, who learns from Kazuko Yoshiyama, Makoto’s aunt and the protagonist to the original story, that Makoto has the power to travel through time. Nick Pinkerton of The Village Voice said, “there’s real craftsmanship for how [the film] sustains its sense of summer quietude and sun-soaked haziness through a few carefully reprised motifs: three-cornered games of catch, mountainous cloud formations, classroom still-lifes.”

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