Case Closed - Crimson Love Letter

[Verso Sciolto]

With its theatrical release, on April 15, 2017, this 21st "Detective Conan" film comes with a competitive karuta inspired theme. Aoyama-sensei's love for "Chihayafuru" is a good enough reason to get Suetsugu-sensei involved in promotional activities, too, if you ask me. At least, that's my excuse for posting this thread.

The brief Cimema Today write up, in Japanese, for their latest collaboration includes a clip of them together drawing some more

Spoiler for artwork:

Don't let your eyes roam like that Chihaya. Focus.

Not to wander too far off topic right from the OP, here is the film's official web site.
The title and imagery on that site does make me curious if Hyakunin Isshu poetry is used symbolically in the film.

Spoiler for poetry:

Some poetic license is taken in the film's title. Kara-kurenai, translated as Crimson, represents the first "syllables" of the "second verse" of Ariwara no Narihira's "Chihayafuru" poem (17). The poem from which Suetsugu took the pillow word of the "first verse" to name her own series.
The cards depicted on the film site's first page, also used in promotional posters, include those for Murasaki Shikibu's "Meguriahite" (57), "Shinoburedo" (40) attributed to Taira no Kanemori and Shokushi Naisshinou's "Tama no o yo" (89).

... and while on the subject of Chihayafuru, filming for a Live Action sequel is scheduled throughout May and June 2017. Publication of Suetsugu's manga serialisation resumes May 15.

Edit to add (Sat. April 15):
ANN picked up the story. In "Manga Artists of Detective Conan and Chihayafuru Team Up with Collaborative Illustration", Amanda Whalen provides, among other things, translations from their exchanges.

One of the Conan film trailers makes it clear that animated karuta match play is incorporated into its narrative. The trailer opens with an exciting and hopefully meaningful recitation of

Spoiler for poetry:

"Se o hayami" composed by Retired Emperor Sotoku, included as the 77th poetry card in the competitive karuta set of one hundred poems by one hundred poets based around Fujiwara no Teika’s Ogura collection.

Perhaps made most prominently visible in this trailer is the set -of a reading card and its corresponding playing card- for the poem "yama-gaha ni", to use Mostow's transliteration* of poem 32, by Harumichi no Tsuraki. A poem referencing a stream as well as the type of autumn foliage perhaps even more prominently visible in the artwork for the film and its settings.

* "Pictures of the Heart" Joshua S. Mostow.

That trailer, embedded:

Edits on Aprll 16 & 17: As entries from moviegoers to opening weekend screenings had not quite come to an end on Sunday evening, it already looked like this film had been doing quite well for itself. At the time the Eiga.com page for it placed it fourth overall, with four stars on average based on submitted reviews.

In the weekly weekend admissions ranking chart, as published on the site on Monday, April 17, 2017, the opening weekend, nation wide across 352 cinemas on 368 screens, comfortably landed Conan on top. As ANN put it into English:21st Detective Conan Film Earns Franchise's Highest Opening Weekend Box Office, "... , sold 987,568 tickets and earned 1,286,928,000 yen (about US$11.88 million) in its opening Saturday-Sunday weekend, setting a new opening weekend record for the franchise."

Edit, April 19, 2017, to add a little more about the title:

Spoiler for Love Letter:

Something interesting happens in the latter part of the title as well. 恋歌 is translated as “Love Letter”. Not just in English but in Japanese transliteration as well. The little furigana characters say ラプレター and thus expect us to. In turn, Rabu Retta becomes Love Letter or vice versa. A novelty reading, a bit removed from Man'yōgana.
恋歌 undoubtedly also refers to those sections of poetry anthologies devoted to the topic of love poems, in the sense of koi and koi no uta.

Which, interestingly enough, is not the part in which Narihira’s “Chihayaburu” poem was collected in the "Kokin Wakashū". That particular "Chihayaburu" poem appeared in part five, the second of two parts devoted to the Autumn season, as poem 294. Helen McCullough provided the following English translation of the shared headnote for the poem in Kokinshū:

“Composed when the Nijo Empress [Koshi] was still called the mother of the Crown Prince. Topic set: a folding-screen picture of autumn leaves floating on the Tatsuta river.”

Edit, April 20:
This in turn can be tied in to the following snippet from the transcript of the conversation. Suetsugu is quoted as having said:

早く蘭ちゃんを安心させてあげて！と思います。笑　でも、そうしたら話が終わっちゃうのかな？とも思ったり 。。。だからみなさんも想像するんでしょうね。私、京極君も好きなんですよ。園子ちゃんとのシーンがみたい ですね！

It doesn’t come as a complete surprise that she would say something like this at a joint event like that but I hope to convey the positive side of such a remark. It seems to me that she means this as a mild admonition of the audience and not as an indication that she herself thinks about stories in those terms. Not necessarily and certainly not exclusively.

Spoiler for Trailer and depictions of "Hyakunin Isshu":

Inishie no uta. To back up a little further. At 0:15min we get to see what appear to be blood drops and two cards dropping down, “Torifuda”. Eleven of them also scattered on the floor. By the numbers. Falling on the right-hand side of the screen, the card for poem 95. On the ground -from left to right- "Top": 45, 68, 03, 96; "centre": 83, 74, 12, 47, 37; "Bottom": 51, getting splattered. Haven’t been able to figure out the two cards cut off by the left-hand edge of the screen.
The whole set of playing cards as used for the vast majority of officially sanctioned competitive Carta matches What to do about the cards with pictures? Dunno, play it by ear, I suppose.

[Chosen_Hero]

Let me guess, it's going to end with something happening to Ran and Conan/Shinichi will save her... again, like in almost every movie.

Love the series but man if there was anything I would change it would be their relationship which got tired of half way through the anime.

[El Rue]

And so Japan's population continues to dwindle at an alarming rate as victims pile up with normal everyday joes suddenly turn into criminal masterminds as if influenced by the appearance of a certain group who by some cosmic happenstance, always seem to be at the scene of the crime.

[Renegade334]

Eh? They're going to use the movie as the actual introduction (i.e. introduction between characters, since in the manga she has yet to reveal herself to Conan and his friends) to Heiji's fiancée?

That's peculiar: usually the CC movies are just standalone stories that have little to no impact on the manga storyline itself. They are supposedly canon, but Gosho Aoyama doesn't exactly go out of his way to incorporate them into his manga (even by vague references and whatnot).

[Kakurin]

Originally Posted by Chosen_Hero

Let me guess, it's going to end with something happening to Ran and Conan/Shinichi will save her... again, like in almost every movie.

You guessed wrong.

[Yye1]

any spoilers on this movie yet? Very interested in the kazuha-heiji-momiji triangle

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by Verso Sciolto

Spoiler:

... What to do about the cards with pictures? Dunno, play it by ear, I suppose.

That suggestion appears to have been made with this special clip, released back in December 2016, hosted on Toho's YouTube channel. The recitation of a poem at the very beginning leads to the picture of that poem's "Yomifuda", its "reading card" with the full text and the poet's portrait. Eight seconds into the clip the card is held up by -and thereby perhaps purposely associated with- a specific character from the story.

Mostow wrote in his commentary on the poem that it was included in the first book of love poems for the Shūishū or Shūi Wakashū, the third imperial anthology of waka compiled around the year 1005.

Originally Posted by Yye1

any spoilers on this movie yet? Very interested in the kazuha-heiji-momiji triangle

Spoiler:

Shinoburedo
iro ni idenikiri
wa ga kohi ha
mono ya omofu to
hito no tofu made

Stuart Varnam-Atkin provided the following English translation of the poem, for the bi-lingual edition of Chihayafuru (Vol. 1):
"Ah, you must be in love!"
I hear the voices say:
Is it my blushing face
That gives my secrets away?

[Kakurin]

Originally Posted by Yye1

any spoilers on this movie yet? Very interested in the kazuha-heiji-momiji triangle

If you only want spoilers on Heiji/Momiji/Kazuha

Spoiler for Spoiler:

Early in the movie when the gang met Momiji by coincidence in the hallway she grabs Heiji and declares him to be her fiance. Kazuha's friend from the karuta club in her school got injured during the bombing of the TV station they were at and her friend pushes her to be her replacement at the big tournament coming up, in which Momiji also participates. Momiji overhears that and mocks them for thinking Kazuha had a chance. A fired up Kazuha challenges Momiji. As she leaves following that, Momiji drops her ICOCA case, in it are two pictures, including one with Heiji and Momiji when they were kids. As the movie goes along it turns out that this picture was taken at a karuta tournament for kids, where Heiji defeated Momiji and following that promised to marry her (Heiji completely forgot both meeting Momiji before and the promise). Fast-forward to the conclusion of the movie, as Heiji is saving Kazuha while jumping off a building located on a tower with a bike he mumbles that he still has something he needs to tell Kazuha. After they get off unharmed Kazuha presses Heiji over what he wants to tell her. Heiji, like always, tries to brush it off saying that he didn't say anything. Kazuha, due to the recent focus on Karuta, has gotten sensitive ears and has nothing of that and chases Heiji around. As for Momiji, in the very end it turns out that she had misheard Heiji's promise. Don't remember exactly what he said anymore, but it was a line to encourage her to get better (she was crying after she lost to Heiji), which when wrongly linked together sounded like a marriage promise.

[Gintokifan22]

When is this kid ever going to return back to his adult self? Is it that popular in Japan? Poor kid.

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by Gintokifan22

When is this kid ever going to return back to his adult self? Is it that popular in Japan? Poor kid.

Not just yet. Yes, quite popular. The animated series is still running weekly at prime time too. This film appears to have held up well over its second weekend in cinemas as well. Dropping to number two, according to the ranking chart released on Monday, April 24, 2017. ANN translates the numbers corresponding with this weekend's number two position into: "The film sold 580,000 tickets in its second weekend for a box office intake of 748 million yen (about US$6.8 million)".

Side note: The upcoming weekend will be the start of golden week (... with Shōwa no Hi falling on the first Saturday this year.)

Originally Posted by Verso Sciolto

Mostow wrote in his commentary on the poem that it was included in the first book of love poems for the "Shūishū" or "Shūi Wakashū", the third imperial anthology of waka compiled around the year 1005 CE.

Spoiler:

Shinoburedo
iro ni idenikiri
wa ga kohi ha
mono ya omofu to
hito no tofu made
[Mostow]

Stuart Varnam-Atkin provided the following English translation of the poem, for the bi-lingual edition of "Chihayafuru" (Vol. 1):
"Ah, you must be in love!"
I hear the voices say:
Is it my blushing face
That gives my secrets away?

In the translation provided in Edwin A. Cranston's, "A Waka Anthology, Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance" (2006), that poem is worded slightly different:

Spoiler:

895 [sis XI:622]
Taira no Kanemori [...]
Shinoburedo
Iro ni idenikeri
Wa ga koi wa
Mono ya omou to
Hito no tou made

I had kept it dark,
The hue that now is plain to see:
My longing is out,
People have started to notice;
“What’s on your mind?” they ask.

Like Mostow, but unlike Varnam-Atkin, Cranston too made note of the headnote shared with Mibu no Tadamine's "koi su chō" poem. A poem which immediately follows it numerically in Teika's Ogura collection but preceded it in Shūishū, when they were collected together. The translation of the shared headnote indicates both poems were composed for a: "poem Contest of the Tenryaku Reign [947-57]" Dated in the commentary to the year 960. Cranston also notes that: "The poems appear as Shūishō 228 and 229. The compilation for which is said to have started around the year 996.

The moment both poems were composed together - in the context of this contest- and the moment they were collected in the poetry anthologies mentioned thus far is thus separated by some decades. Centuries passed before Fujiwara no Teika was born and was tasked with creating the Ogura collection. Teika in turn is separated, by a rough millennium give or take a few years, from our own time. April 2017, when at least one of the "... pair on the secret kept and lost... " was highlighted by one of the main characters in an animated film.
While on the subject of what is popular in Japan...

Do people in Japan want him to return, is that the question?

Edit to add:
Also perhaps noteworthy, on the subject of reversal. Curiously, the cards depicted in the promotional artwork and those used in some of the scenes showing karuta matches, do not have the distinctive kaede/maple motif as used on the reverse of the standard karuta competition set. Visible in other scenes. On the back of the face-down cards scattered at 0:24 in the 1:33min trailer, for example, and in this gif. An illustration of the pattern can also be found on page four of this Tengudo karuta catalogue PDF.

… and belatedly adding that the University of Virginia (UVa) hosts probably the most accessible translation online, into present day Japanese and English, of this poem. As part of its collaborative Japanese Text Initiative.

Update, April 29.
ANN: 21st Detective Conan Film's English-Subtitled Trailer Streamed ahead of overseas theatrical release dates.

Update, the second of May.
... the translation of the poem recited at the very beginning of the English subtitled trailer appears to be original.

Ranking for the weekend of April 29/30. Held onto second, according to the list published on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017.

Update, one month later.
"Kara Kurenai Love Letter" finally relinquished second place, after its seventh weekend in the rankings as posted on Eiga.com. The "21st Detective Conan Film Earns 6.35 Billion Yen, Sets New Record For Film Franchise". "The film has sold 4,948,000 tickets since opening in Japan on April 15." - per ANN.

I also like it that people who watched the film have started showing up in comment sections for karuta related videos online.

[Verso Sciolto]

Slightly morbid re-interpretations of the poems / re-evaluations of the poets. Broadcast today, January 27, 2018, on: 世界一受けたい授業

Subject 3:【国語】ピーター・J・マクミラン 先生
コナン君と一緒に推理!
現代風に超意訳・ホントは怖～い百人一首。

Guest lecturer's profiles:
http://www.ntv.co.jp/sekaju/profile/...macmillan.html
http://peter-macmillan.com/profile/

[Verso Sciolto]

Postponed one week -to make room for the broadcast of Grave of the Fireflies and a brief retrospective of Isao Takahata's career- the film is scheduled to air for the first time on regular TV this upcoming Friday.

https://kinro.jointv.jp/lineup/20180420

Meanwhile 名探偵コナン ゼロの執行人 (Meitantei Conan: Zero no Shikkōnin) "Detective Conan: Zero The Enforcer" has been doing well in theatres since its release last Friday.

[B214]

I actually enjoyed this film more than the other Conan film, probably because of the shift in focus.

[Toukairin]

Originally Posted by Verso Sciolto

Do people in Japan want him to return, is that the question?

Why not? I'm sure that everyone who got hooked up with Detective Conan were intrigued by Shinichi's journey to find the cure that would bring him back to his true form. And as in any journey, there must be an end in sight somewhere down the road. People naturally want to see the end of that road.

Since we are in the realm of past references and quotes, remember Christopher Nolan:

Originally Posted by Christopher Nolan

Every great story demands a great ending

As much as we loved Bruce Wayne's journey as the Dark Knight, we wanted to see how this would end as long as we can have a great ending to the saga. In the case of Detective Conan, people want to see that great ending. Gosho Aoyama should be able to deliver that grand finale people always wanted to see.

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by Toukairin

Why not?...

For whatever this is worth, I don't get the impression Aoyama works with a conclusion in mind and I don't think this impression bothers the people I know who are/have been watching the animated series / films with a similar approach / mindset - fairly casually but for years now and "we" no doubt constitute a tiny sample. That particular predicament occupies very little of "our" thoughts. Others may disagree with our assessment. My personal interest was -also- almost exclusively in this particular film which -to me- stands out because it is inspired by Chihayafuru and karuta.

[Each episode, arc or case is self-contained, each with their own resolution, but I don't think the series is constructed as steady, linear progression towards the end of the series itself and I don't think that is either the goal or the reason people stay interested although there will eventually be a solution to several central questions which "we" expect will be resolved in the series ending.]


Last Friday's TV Broadcast:
https://kinro.jointv.jp/lineup/20180420
金曜ロードＳＨＯＷ！・名探偵コナンから紅の恋歌 日本テレビ 18/4/20(金) 21:00-114 10.8%
http://www.videor.co.jp/tvrating/2018/04/9702.html