Kicking off the Scotland Loves Animation set of events was a showing of Summer Wars at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Organised by with the help from UK organisations such as Manga Entertainment, the Japan Foundation and Creative Scotland, it is the first in a series of films being shown at the GFT and later at the Edinburgh Filmhouse.
Having been earlier in the year to the UK premiere of Evangelion 2.0, it was familiar territory and the trip up from England wasn't as fraught as I had expected. The queue to enter the cinema was sizeable and with no allocated seats, I feared getting a good spot would be impossible. I was pleasantly surprised though to land in an almost central spot and for some seats to be left vacant.
Photo by xahldera and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0
Taking place in Glasgow in the week leading up to the Glasgow Film Festival, the premiere was preceded by the airing of the first movie in the Rebuild series: Evangelion 1.0. Bookended by an informative talk by Emily Fussell of the BBFC, and an introduction by the effusive Jonathan Clements. Kicking off a series of animated shenanigans dubbed "Scotland Loves Animation" and succeeding the Scottish anime convention "Auchinawa", Scotland and Glasgow in particular is becoming one of the prime places to catch anime and Japanese goings on.
Beginning shortly before half three in the afternoon, tickets had been purchased online for the double bill and sold out in short order. The line for entering the cinema stretched out of the building and it was immediately obvious by the dress of the patrons what they were queuing for. After a short wait and filing into the surprisingly spacious cinema one of the Glasgow Film Theatre, the proceedings were kicked off by Emily Fussell, a media classifier for the BBFC, with a talk focusing on the tribulations in classifying anime for release in the UK.
