A young Japanese actress remembers her war childhood in Korea. Her father goes to fight, her baby sister Miko dies of typhoid, her beloved Korean maid Ohana is fired due to a mistake which could cost Chiko her life... By and by Chiko realizes that the country is being ruled by the Japanese and the Koreans are persecuted. When the war ends, the Koreans chase the Japanese rule and the roles change. Now Chiko's family is unwanted. But then the Russians come and this is the end. They have to burn all the pictures to avoid all suspicions... even Miko's picture. But when the Russians come to their house, they decide to flee over the 38th Parallel towards freedom. A group of men, women, children struggles along the mountains, led by the light of the Northern Star. Along the way they meet a Korean man, who is willing to help them to escape the Russian soldiers although his family was killed by the Japanese.
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
Good concept, poorly executed.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
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.About 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.Later 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.The 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.The 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.Soundtrack was ordinary, not much to say about it. There were some nice dramaparts followed by fitting music but that's just normal.So 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 completely into these war dramas it is watchable, but it's not recommended for getting into these kinds of movies.
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