Marketing
As with most other major film and animation releases in Japan, a wide array of promotional merchandise was marketed before and during the OVA's release, including Nissin Cup Noodles with lead character Takeru printed on the lid, small desktop figurines, a 4 flavours Nissin Cup Noodles bundled Freedom DVD gift set, a limited Nissin Cup Noodle container and badges designed by video rental outlet Tsutaya that came free with the purchase of Freedom 1, among tie-ins with other retailers. Although Freedom Project is a direct-to-video (DVD) animation, it stands apart from conventional OVA series first by the involvement of Otomo, and also from the collaboration with Nissin Cup Noodles resulting in extensive TV advertising scheduled to run through the duration of the series until its conclusion with Freedom 6.
Publicity for the series began April 11, 2006, with large banners and posters featuring concept sketches of the lead characters Takeru, Kazuma and their vehicles lining Tokyo's busiest train stations, such as Shibuya and Shinjuku — the latter being the busiest railway station in the world with 3 million transiting passengers every day. These initial pencil-work posters were later replaced by fully coloured, CG created versions with finished background art, giving the effect of a work-in-progress animation piece being completed.
At the same time, 30-second television spots were shown on TV — short trailers providing a glimpse of the story to unfold in Freedom 1. The 5th advertising spot is currently being shown on Japanese television [April 20, 2007], and reveals major plot advances from Freedom 3. Some of these spots were made available on the limited-edition Freedom Previsited DVD (see release notes below).
A special Freedom Project page, a collaboration between Yahoo! Japan and Nissin, will also stream every episode of the series one week before its DVD release date.
Print ads showcasing Katsuhiro Otomo's sketches for the OVA were also released in magazines nationwide. Shortly before the Freedom 1 DVD release, many popular media, manga and animation magazines ran articles for the OVA, featuring mecha design descriptions and interviews with staff members.
The largely successful publicity campaign for Freedom Project was very well received by fans of Katsuhiro Otomo and animation fans in Japan, who saw him returning to his strengths of designing stylish mecha and memorable characters.
It seemed that Otomo was concerned with the production of this work overall and was the director at first, but was over for participation only for character and mechanic design after all. According to the announcement of Nissin side, nonparticipation of Otomo is on schedule, Otomo confesses having resigned this work, or has refused the comment with some magazines.[2]
