Hunting the Elusive

I am ashamed to say this completely slipped under my radar until good friend Windbell surprise-linked me on MSN. Project Promise is the 10th anniversary celebration of the collaboration between Makoto Shinkai and Tenmon (from 1999, starting with Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko, though I rather suspect their acquaintance and collaboration might have started even earlier than that). Needless to say, it is something to celebrate, this combination of powerhouse geniuses who excel in their own fields! Actually, I can’t believe I am not using more exclamation marks in this post.

In any case, Project Promise is a rather multi-pronged phenomenon, as seen from the web site. The main thing of course, is the album, Makoto Shinkai Sakuhin IMAGE ALBUM Promise (新海誠作品イメージアルバム「Promise」), for 2800 yen, due out 9th December 2009. It is using “HQCD” hopefully without any problems in terms of data protection.

Containing tracks from pretty much all of Makoto Shinkai’s works, this would normally not be too special, except that Project Promise is also a collaboration with Eminence. EMINENCE, FFS, Sydney’s very own animu-orchestra!

As the Project Promise site states, Eminence breathes new life into the music, with a full (and real) orchestral rendering. Recording was done at the Sydney Fox studios.

Not to mention there is a friggin’ concert at 14:00 on 20 December 2009 at the Animate Akihabara Main branch.

Eminence needs to bring the goodness back to Australia. A Makoto Shinkai x Tenmon themed concert, please!

Check out the sample pieces on the Project Promise site, though for some weird reason they are using .RM file format (which I just use CCCP-MPC to open).

While you can view the trailer on the official site, I’ve also cropped off the letter boxes and put it on Youtube.