Freedom’s 9th television commercial started airing on Japan TV from the 1st of January 2006, and this particular one is undoubtably my favourite of the lot. I really feel that the numerous intense and kinetically charged bike sequences captured the essense of Otomo’s energetic visual style beautifully. Just as before the commercial is extremely spoilerific and gives away major plotlines, but I hope this short preview of the climatic showdown in Eden will make fans want to watch Freedom 7 even more.

This is the first time that Utada’s song was not used as the theme music, and a special track was written specially for this commercial. Production for this number was done at the same time while we were toiling hard on Freedom 6, so I worked on fewer shots than usual compared to the previous commercials, but thankfully they were the neater ones – including a few of Takeru and Ao on the bike. An energetic scene with fast moving objects are the toughest to light because they need be animated as well, but I think the final look turned out pretty good.

You can view the commercial here.

Also check out the previous Freedom Nissin Cup Noodle commercials number 8, number 7, and number 6.