Sennen Joyuu (Millennium Actress)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Chiyoko Millennial Actress

Japanese: 千年女優

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Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Sep 14, 2002

Producers: Bandai Visual, WOWOW, Genco, Kadokawa Shoten, KlockWorx

Licensors: Eleven Arts, DreamWorks

Studios: Madhouse

Source: Original

Genres: Action, Adventure, Award Winning, Drama, Fantasy, Romance

Themes: Historical, Showbiz

Duration: 1 hr. 26 min.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.25¹ (scored by 79,003 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #289²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1261

Members: 175,210

Favorites: 2,467

Available At

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Synopsis

At the turn of the millennium, Ginei Studio's dilapidated buildings are set to be demolished. Ex-employee and filmmaker Genya Tachibana decides to honor this occasion with a commemorative documentary about the company's star actress: Chiyoko Fujiwara, the reclusive sweetheart of Shouwa Era cinema. Having finally obtained permission to interview the retired starlet, an enamored Genya drags along cynical cameraman Kyouji Ida to meet her, ready to put his lifelong idol back in the spotlight once more.

Hidden in this secluded mountain retreat is a thousand years of history condensed into one lifetime, waiting to be narrated. Chiyoko's recollections take them on an illusionary journey through Japanese cinematic history that transcends the boundaries of reality; the saga of her acting career intertwines with her filmography, the actors in her life blend seamlessly with the characters on screen, and the present melds with the past. Though the actress may have retired at the height of her career 30 years ago, the curtain on her life's stage has yet to fall.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The film won the awards of Best Animation Film and Fantasia Ground-Breaker at the 2001 Fantasia Film Festival. It was also awarded the Feature Film Award at the 8th Animation Kobe. In 2002, it won the prestigious Ofuji Noburo Award at the Mainichi Film Awards, and was honored with the Orient Express Award at the 2001 Festival de Cine de Sitges in Spain. The film was nominated for four Annie Awards in 2004, including Outstanding Direction and Writing.

Episode Videos

Episode 1

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Fujiwara, Chiyoko

Main

Orikasa, Fumiko
Japanese

Tachibana, Genya

Main

Iizuka, Shouzou
Japanese

Ida, Kyouji

Main

Onosaka, Masaya
Japanese

Man of the Key

Supporting

Yamadera, Kouichi
Japanese

Ootaki, Junichi

Supporting

Suzuoki, Hirotaka
Japanese

Ayakashi

Supporting

Scarface

Supporting

Tsukayama, Masane
Japanese

Shimao, Eiko

Supporting

Tsuda, Shouko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maki, Taro

Producer

Kon, Satoshi

Director, Script, Screenplay, Original Creator, Character Design

Mima, Masafumi

Sound Director

Murai, Sadayuki

Script

Edit

Opening Theme

"Chiyoko no Theme Mode-1 (千代子のテーマ MODE-1)" by Susumu Hirasawa

Edit

Ending Theme

"Rotation [lotus-2]" by Susumu Hirasawa

More reviews

Reviews

Mar 21, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

Millennium Actress is a wonderfully crafted story about a fateful encounter of a young girl and how it shaped the rest of her life. Though I am always a little hesitant about awarding such high marks to anything, this movie was one of the most riveting and unique anime experiences I have had.

The story follows a pair of filmmakers who are interviewing a famous actress who has been retired for many years to celebrate the studio's 70th anniversary. Millennium Actress features one of the most original story telling methods I have seen. We see the majority of the movie told through the ...

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Jun 10, 2008

kiriska

Recommended

"What does this key open?" "The most important thing in the world."

STORY - Millennium Actress's story is very simplistic and very sweet. I'm not usually a fan of unquestioning, devotional love, especially to such a crazed, obsessive extent, but the way this movie presents things makes it very easy to like. Just the extent of everything, the lengths to which Chiyoko had been willing to go; all of it was incredible. Even better still, was the idea that we in the audience could not know just how much of it was real and just how much of it was fantasy. The lines seem permanently blurred ... and any one scene might have just as easily been a memory or a dream, especially since all of the recollections are coming at an age where forgetfulness is common, making everything all the more tragic.

The use of movies to convey a fantasy was brilliant, especially considering the story's form as a movie. The way people in the present are thrown into the past (or fantasy) was also a wonderfully creative way to tie the two times together, and there's even a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-commentary on this way of handling things. Really, it's Satoshi Kon's phenomenal storytelling that transforms Millennium Actress's exceedingly simple plotline into a masterpiece.

CHARACTERS - I have mixed feelings about the characters in this movie. I've said before that I'm not a fan of sudden, unquestioning love; thus, I definitely wasn't a fan of the fact that Chiyoko essentially fell into eternal love with a man she'd met once, briefly, for several short hours. At the same time, the extent to which she took this infatuation seemed strangely realistic, despite how incredible it was. Indeed, people obsess over little things all the time, irrelevant people, incidental meetings; there are short moments that they will remember for the rest of their lives, so perhaps it isn't so strange that Chiyoko should cling onto something like that. Besides, it wasn't as if she had thrown her entire life away for the man, even if she did build up everything she had in order for him to see her. Aside from the obsession, I really enjoyed the way the elder Chiyoko was portrayed. It was very believable that she would become a recluse, and the way she told her story, the small revelations that came along with it -- all of it was wonderfully interesting to watch and very touching in the end.

The other characters in the movie are all relatively minor and their characters subsequently less complex. Mostly, their personalities are sculpted so that they contribute directly to moving Chiyoko's story along, whether by acting as antagonists or by wanting to discover more. In the end, I find them more to be tools to help Chiyoko along more than being characters of their own, but in a movie like this, I think that's fine.

ARTSTYLE & ANIMATION - Millennium Actress has some absolutely gorgeous animation. The art style is rather typical of Satoshi Kon, and you'll easily notice that many of his middle-aged and older male characters look startlingly similar across the movies and series he's directed, but the same can be said with a number of other prominant artists and directors. What I loved about the animation itself was how smoothly scene transitions were handled, especially considering that we moved back and forth between present day and past recollection and between reality and movie fantasy constantly. The inclusion of the present day interviewers within flashbacks is one of my favorite touches and really helps weld everything together in the end. It was especially nice too, to see so many different kinds of scenes animated since they were just scenes within Chiyoko's movies.

MUSIC - Maybe I was too wrapped up in the pretty animation and storytelling, but I didn't note very astounding music, though nor did I note anything bad.

VOICE ACTING - I saw this movie subbed. The voices were pretty average for the most part, though I didn't rather enjoy elder Chiyoko's performance for some reason. Her emotion, especially near the end of the movie, was just very touching. :3

OVERALL - I really enjoyed this movie, though if I had just been given a synopsis, I probably wouldn't have been very interested in the first place. Having Satoshi Kon's name attached to it did help though, and I think this is one of the better examples of his works. The way the story was told just changed everything, including the fact that the plot itself was very simple.

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Jul 16, 2017

Fleure

Recommended

The camera zooms towards a slowly-expanding earth from the eyes of the outer Celestials; it glides closer and closer until finally reaching stasis on a face bidding goodbye to her present domain.

As liftoff begins, the heroine speaks her last lines as the shot fades from the heart-clenching scene to a cluttered office, where one man watches the same scene on his little desk-television. Interrupted by the call of his coworker, he rewinds the tape and the one scene changes into a montage of the actress’s life - in reverse.

These scenes and the actress in them, the man watching the actress, and the co-worker beckoning the ...

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Characters & Voice Actors

Fujiwara, Chiyoko

Tachibana, Genya

Ida, Kyouji

Man of the Key

Ootaki, Junichi

Ayakashi

Scarface

Shimao, Eiko

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