With the new VOTOMS anime movie by Mamoru Oshii released in Japan this November, the latest trailer looks genuinely amazing.
While the previous teaser trailer didn’t really reveal much, this new trailer (shown below) opens up more about the movie’s actual story.
In that, the titular “Grey Witch” is a character called Ash Vamps, who is being secretly investigated by an officer called Maki Stauffenberg. This setup should sound familiar, as it’s very similar to the initial premise of the original VOTOMS anime series, where Captain Rochina is hired to investigate Chirico Cuvie.
The fact that Ash Vamps also has blue hair and a similarly nonchalant demeanor to Chirico makes me think this could be an interesting gender swap of the idea from the original TV anime series.
If you’re new to VOTOMS and all of this is whizzing over your head, Chirico Cuvie was a similarly mysterious blue-haired armored trooper pilot who was far more than he seemed. Much of the TV series explores who and what Chirico really was, and the OVAs only expanded on that further.
It’s a smart way to start a reboot like this, and I am already digging Oshii’s style through the lens of VOTOMS.
While I obviously love the original anime written and directed by Ryosuke Takahashi, who has also given his blessing to Oshii’s new adaptation, with Kunio Okawara’s groundbreaking mecha design, I am genuinely excited to see what Oshii will do here.
VOTOMS is probably one of the few mecha anime that also has a solid cultural crossover point with the US and Europe, and Oshii’s name is already well-known due to his work on the Ghost in the Shell anime movies.
Oshii is also no stranger to mecha, though, having been the original director for much of the older Patlabor anime, which is also similarly real-robot in tone to VOTOMS.
In any case, VOTOMS: The Grey Witch is shaping up to be something very special, and here’s hoping it ends up being as good as it already looks once it is released in November.
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