Armored Trooper Votoms: The Grey Witch opens on 20 November

The first of the two new Armored Trooper Votoms films has a release date, and the advance ticket attached to it was drawn for the occasion. Armored Trooper Votoms: The Grey Witch film one opens in Japanese cinemas on 20 November, with a limited poster-sized Mubichike going on sale from 2 October.

Artwork drawn for the ticket alone

The poster is a new piece by Shinobu Tsuneki, the mechanical designer who worked on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and is designing the machinery for these films as well. Tsuneki supplied line art, which was then coloured in a cel style to sit apart from the CG modelling used in the finished film. MOVIE WALKER describes the image as a limited visual used only for this product.

The sheet is A3, costs 4,500 yen including tax but not shipping, and doubles as an online advance ticket: a seal on the reverse carries the purchase number and PIN needed to reserve a seat at any cinema that accepts Mubichike.

Two weeks to buy one

Sales run from noon on 2 October to 23:59 on 25 October, Japan time, through the MOVIE WALKER STORE and nowhere else. Orders are expected to ship around 14 November, and the poster will not be sold at cinema counters. The same store lists a plain online advance ticket and a card ticket at 1,900 yen each, plus a two-film card set at 3,800 yen.

A Sunrise anniversary project

The Grey Witch is a wholly new entry in the Votoms line and part of Sunrise's 50th anniversary slate. Mamoru Oshii directs both films, with Kenji Kawai composing, Sunrise producing with Production I.G support and Bandai Namco Filmworks distributing. The story follows Ash Vamps, a pilot feared as the Grey Witch for surviving operations nobody else walks away from, and Maki Stauffenberg, the officer sent to find out what she is. Miyuki Sawashiro and Mabuki Andou lead the cast as the two.

Our opinion

Selling a film ticket as an art print is the oldest trick in Japanese cinema merchandising, and the interesting part here is which artist was handed the job. Tsuneki draws machines as engineering rather than glamour, which is exactly the register Votoms has lived in since 1983, and giving him a cell-coloured commission rather than a still from the CG model is a statement about what this revival thinks its audience came for. The price is where the flattery gets tested. At 4,500 yen, three times a standard ticket and only 700 yen short of the two-film card set, the poster is aimed at collectors who have already bought the ticket twice. Oshii directing a war story about a soldier valued as disposable hardware is the promise; a numbered print is how the film pays for it. Collectors will forgive the markup, and the two-week window is the honest signal that this is a run, not a product line.