Thanks for coming out... I'm glad you had a good time.
You didn't really miss anything along the lines of a q&a. Since the evening's programming was so long, Danielle from Kadokawa decided she would rather just do a short introduction for the two films. As you could tell, the audience agreed with her decision because they really wanted to see those movies!
This was my first time seeing NEGADON. The animation is great, and it really captures the look of a late 1950s-early 1960s kaiju film. I think the short running time hurt the story somewhat; 26 minutes doesn't give enough time to flesh things out as I would have liked. That's not to say it was bad... I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the DVD.
I'd seen GREAT YOKAI WAR before and loved it, so I had a lot fun listening to the audience react so positively to the film. I also enjoyed seeing GAMERA THE BRAVE on the big screen... that's always the best way to see a kaiju movie for the first time.
As I think most people would expect by now, GAMERA THE BRAVE is very different from the '90s Gamera films. Taken as the children's film it was intended to be, I thought it was quite good. I liked the characters, the effects were generally well done, and the story had a good bit of heart to it. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I enjoyed it (and the audience did too).
Another nice thing was that the subtitles were excellent. In case anyone was still wondering, the onscreen title for the film was indeed GAMERA THE BRAVE and the subs called Gamera's foe "Zedus".
The folks from Kadokawa were just great, and it was nice to finally meet them face-to-face after months of phone calls and emails. They stuck around for the entire night because they hadn't seen GAMERA THE BRAVE and wanted to watch it for the first time on the big screen with an audience. They told me they were thrilled by the turnout (I don't know the exact numbers, but the Egyptian seats over 600 and there was a very good sized crowd) and how enthusiastic the audience was.
I also heard a rather funny story from one of the Kadokawa reps while we were chatting between the movies. He said someone working for another fest actually asked Kadokawa to prevent the Egyptian Theatre from calling tonight's screening the US premiere of GAMERA THE BRAVE, but Kadokawa refused because (and I quote) "this
is the US premiere".