Ohoshi-sama no Rail

Synopsis:

Characters:

• Kobayashi, Chitose (Main) - Voice Actors: Takamori, Yoshino
• Hatsue (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Neya, Michiko
• Kobayashi, Michiyo (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Sakamoto, Chika, Schwartz, Jessica
• Kobayashi, Masuko (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Han, Keiko
• Kobayashi, Kazuhiko (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Tanaka, Hideyuki
• Ohana (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Chiko
• Sano (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Tsuji, Shinpachi
• Shigeko (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Suzuki, Reiko
• Takahashi (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Umezu, Hideyuki
• Takeshi (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Ogata, Kenichi
• Village Chief (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Chafurin
• Youko (Supporting) - Voice Actors: Ohno, Yuka

Staff:

• Hirata, Toshio (Director)
• Aketagawa, Susumu (Sound Director)
• Urahata, Tatsuhiko (Script)
• Ashino, Yoshiharu (Key Animation)
• Hirata, Kahoru (Key Animation)
• Ikeda, Yuuji (Art Director)
• Kanemori, Yoshinori (Character Design)
• Kimizuka, Katsunori (Animation Director)
• Kobayashi, Yuuko (Background Art)
• Maruyama, Masao (Setting)
• Nagasaki, Hitoshi (Background Art)
• Shinkawa, Nobumasa (Key Animation)
• Takahashi, Shinobu (Background Art)
• Terauchi, Satoshi (Editing)

Reviews:

• User JuneNephthys (Score: 6/10):
  Rail of the Star is a fascinating World War II period piece, about a Japanese military family that are occupying Korea during the war. Based on Chitose Kobayashi’s autobiographical novel of the same name, the story is told from a child’s perspective. Similar to other accounts of children being forced to experience the horrors of war, like Barefoot Gen, it’s a tale of humility and empathy. Not just for the Japanese children, but for the thousands of Koreans who had to suffer under Imperialist Japan’s rule. This review will contain spoilers! You have been warned! • The story begins, with the protagonist (a little girl named Chitose)experiencing life as a normal child, but as the war gets more intense, she begins to notice that all isn’t right in the world. She notices a male student getting bullied for refusing to change his name to a Japanese surname*. He talks about how horrible the Japanese are, Chitose is shocked by this since she has no idea (as a Japanese child in elementary school) how terribly mistreated the Koreans are by Japanese troops. Her Korean classmate then joins the Korean Liberation Army and gets murdered by Japanese troops, when he tries to fight them off at the border. Another instance of this is when Koreans are cheering in the street, after Japanese has lost the war, and Chitose can’t comprehend it. Her father has to explain to her that it’s because ‘their prisoners are being set free.’n* The sōshi-kaimei (name-changing) edict is later turned on its head toward the end of the film, when Chitose’s family has to hide that they are Japanese and speak only Korean—while they’re fleeing the country.nn•Later, the Korean housekeeper (a teenage girl, named Ohana) is sewing a patch into Chitose’s Shōwa-era set of trousers and she accidentally leaves the needle in, Chitose carelessly slips them on and the needle gets lodged really deep in her body. After surgery, the doctor says that the accident could have been fatal and after Chitose’s younger sister had already passed away, Ohana is abruptly fired. Later, Chitose is out walking with her mother and she sees Ohana working at a brothel. In her childhood, she obviously had no idea about sex work but the atmosphere in the film is so dense that it implies that Chitose can somehow sense that her former babysitter was in a bad situation. I teared up at this scene because the implications of a kind girl, like Ohana, being forced to work as a comfort woman was so cruel. At the end of the film, Chitose is an adult but stilly harbors guilt for what happened to Ohana—after receiving flowers, following her live theater performance as an adult, Chitose suspects that they are from Ohana and screams her name outside, in a crowded Tokyo street.nn•Ohana’s fate correlates to the entire theme of the film: unpredictable circumstances can lead us to ruin. As citizens, we are often punished by our government’s decisions to go to war and…
• User Lockensocke (Score: 4/10):
  There are so many war drama anime out there (Barefoot Gen, Grave of the fireflies and Himeyuki to call a few) that you nearly even can call them cliché, but since everyone that I have seen have big differences in the part they focused, I wouldn’t recommend calling them cliché at all. So we got the war dramas that focus on the probably most famous tragedy, the nuclear explosion of Hiroshima (Barefoot Gen), one that focused more on the survival after a bombing without parents (Grave of the fireflies) and so on. In this case, Rail of the Star we got the focus on the,in Korean living Japanese during and after the war, which is a pretty interesting setting. Sadly the movie itself wasnt so interesting basically because it wasn’t made that well.nnAbout the story: We got a few main protagonists, but the most screentime I guess was spend on chiko a young girl whos father leads a coal mine in Korean( propably to support the war). Chiko also got a younger sister and a mother. The start of the show focused more on the time during the war and wanted to show the suffering of the Korean and the torture the Japanese inflicted onto them, but since its on the one had a movie for children and on the other hand on the Japanese side the whole “toture” part is limited to a few Japanese kids beating up a Korean kid. So the start was rather showing the kids play to create a emotional connection to the audience, which wasnt made that bad, but aslo not very suprisingly in any way.nnLater on we see the end of the war (Korean celebrating) and the gloomy Japanese which know that they should go back to their homeland as soon as possible. It’s a typical for such a show to let the Russian military appeal to the audience as the “bad guys” and the Japanese refugees appeal cute (chiko) innocent and “good”. For me this representation is pretty naïve but like I said before since that movies target group seemed to be children it’s kinda logical to go that way.nnThe characters itself were a pretty poor part of the anime as well. There wasn’t any depth to any of the characters. Chiko was maybe the only one with a bit more depth, but she was just a plain kid, not much to go into anyways. The other characters where shallow, shown with only the typical character interaction between them for such a show.nnThe art wasn’t much outstanding but it wasn’t bad. It looks like a children movie with cute characters and it’s a bit older as well.nnSoundtrack was ordinary, not much to say about it. There were some nice dramaparts followed by fitting music but that’s just normal.nnSo over all this movie isn’t very special. The premise was quite interesting but the movie overall was filled with only very few consequences, no mature storytelling and no depth into characters. If you are…

Forum Topics:

• Rail of the Star: A True Story of Children Episode 1 Discussion

External Links:

• Official Site
• AniDB
• ANN
• Wikipedia