Canada is stepping up its game, as the country's tourism department has commissioned the esteemed Japanese anime movie director, Makoto Shinkai, to create a tourism video for their popular tourist destinations.
The 30-second promotion video has been uploaded to YouTube and entailed beautifully rendered, real-life vistas that can be found in Vancouver, Toronto, Banff, Abraham Lake, Nathan Phillips Square, Granville Island, the Canadian Rockies, and Niagara Falls. The video tourism campaign was intended for the Japanese market, but the video was commissioned by Destination Canada, an international tourism company that works with the Canadian Government to promote tourism in Canada.
The video featured two Japanese friends enjoying their time together in Canada visiting various markets, landmarks, and of course, the snowy locale. Shinkai worked with CoMix Wave studios to make the video as beautiful as possible; viewers might even mistake it for another one of Shinkai's slice-of-life romance anime movies.
Straight has confirmed that the names of the two characters in the video are Yuya and Satsuki. While anime is more commonly seen in Japan as a commercial medium, the website has suggested that it would be received well in Canada, or at least in Vancouver, where animation has seen an increasing popularity over the years. It will also help that the creators have won awards for their recent projects.
Shinkai and CoMix Wave animation studios' "Kimi No Na Wa" or "Your Name," garnered several awards last year. Currently, Shinkai's masterpiece has a score of 98 percent from critics and 94 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The anime film has also won several local and international accolades.
"Your Name" is a slice-of-life romance anime movie where a boy and a girl get their bodies mysteriously swapped, prompting them to embark on a quest to help each other solve the mystery, as it unfolds into something bigger and more relevant. This was only one among many of Shinkai's award-winning Japanese anime movies.
Those interested in seeing the video or have been wanting to visit Canada may watch the promotional tourism advertisement here.
