A woman tries in vain to try to hire someone with a boat to take her to the co-ordinates of the spot where battleship Yamato had been sunk 60 years, less one day, earlier in 1945. Her father had served on the Yamato. He survived that ordeal and had recently died. Well finally having given up hope she tells an old man, who had refused to be chartered by her, who her father was. This man knew her father and thought he had died amongst the 2,498 of the 2,700 man crew, who died with the Yamato. He survived that last day himself and not knowing her father had also, he assumed he was dead. So now he agrees to try to take her to that spot the next day which will be the 60th anniversary. The trip will be long enough in a small barely ocean going fishing boat which of course leads to this man telling things he remembers of those times. Overall this is a spectacular movie I thought. With the horror of mass death in war portrayed with grim realism while also being quite extremely emotionally heart felt many times. Besides the Yamato the various different US aircraft involved are also rendered faithfully which is great for people who know these planes.

Directed by Junya Sato Produced by Noriko Koyanagi and Haruki Kadokawa Written by Jun Henmi (the novel) and Junya Sato
Starring: Takashi Sorimachi, Shidou Nakamura, Yu Aoi, Kenichi Matsuyama, Junichi Haruta, Kyoka Suzuki, Tetsuya Watari, Eiji Okuda
Music by Joe Hisaishi
Cinematography Yoshitaka Sakamoto Editing by Takero Yoneda Release date 17 December 2005 Length: 2:23:24

I added the spectacular L'Oyssee de Cartier 3.5 minute commercial to the end of this MKV file. I Hardcoded the English subtitles as well. It plays fine in WMP and Divx player but not quite so well in VLC. Apparently VLC has an issue with larger resolution HD MKV which they'll hopefully fix soon.

Video: 1920x1080 MKV NTSC 30fps Audio: 2 channel Stereo 44 kHz Total Length: 2:26:54