As soon as Madonna reinvented herself as a manga-style character for her Drowned World tour in 2001, it was clear that a new art form had well and truly arrived from the east. Later, when the fashion houses Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Dior dressed up models to resemble cartoon characters, the trend was confirmed. And now with a Disney-backed animé movie, Howl’s Moving Castle, filling cinemas all over the country, it seems that Scotland, along with the rest of Europe and America, is turning Japanese.

But if cinema-goers and fashionistas here have embraced animé — the Japanese form of animation (manga is its comic book sibling) — it is at least reassuring to know that Japan’s film-makers are prepared to turn to Scotland for their inspiration.

Right now in the Tokyo studios of one of animé’s leading directors, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the next big production is being drawn together, and it reeks of Scotland.

The film is Highlander: Vengeance, an animated sequel to the Highlander movie, starring Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert. The backers of Kawajiri’s movie — which include the producers of the 1986 Hollywood original — are confident that Highlander: Vengeance will have just as big an impact, if not more so.

It is nearly 20 years since Connery declared “there can be only one,” as he explained how immortals had to battle each other down through the centuries, but he could not have been more wrong. That first movie spawned four live-action sequels, a long-running television series, a spin-off about a female immortal and even a children’s cartoon show.

Always interested in new directions and new sources of revenue for the franchise, Highlander’s producer, Bill Panzer, was excited to receive an approach from Kawajiri. “The guy is such a wonderful director,” he said. “We’re not animators and it’s been fun and challenging.”

The original film featured lots of swordplay, spiritual reflections on the nature of immortality, and it jumped back and forward between Scotland in the 16th century and New York in the present day, swashbuckler and urban thriller.

In the animé, the same shifting timeframe is employed. The protagonist Colin MacLeod pursues his enemy Marcus Octavius, through history from the time of the ancient Romans, when Octavius killed his lover, into the future, a century from now. MacLeod is presented as Scottish to the core, his long hair tied back with a band patterned like a simplified form of tartan.

While the story is set partly in Scotland, the script has been written by David Abramowitz, an American writer who worked on the television series. “I love Highlander,” says Abramowitz. “Someone once called Highlander, at its best, ‘a Talmudic discussion, with ass-kicking’.”

The films of Kawajiri’s fellow-countryman, Hayao Miyazaki, have also captured imaginations in the West and, with the financial backing of Disney, have become mainstream. These explorations of childhood fears vividly deliver the most beguiling fantasies and demonstrate the freedom of the genre, as Abramowitz explained.

“I was really excited,” he says. “We can do flashbacks that are so far beyond what we can do on a regular movie. There are sequences like fighting on the wing of a German bomber, as it attacks England during the Blitz, and falling off the wing and landing in the midst of a church in Coventry.”

Since the original film was made, Highlander has acquired a cult following and a trickle of fans still arrives from all over the world to visit Glenfinnan in the west Highlands, the supposed birthplace of the original Highlander hero Connor MacLeod. The popularity of anime and manga promises to open up a whole new audience to the mystique of Highlander, when Kawajiri’s movie is screened. By no means is that audience made up purely of juvenile devotees of Japanese computer games. Across the UK, bookstores are groaning under the weight of manga comics aimed at the adult market, and Kawajiri’s movie is likely to breach the generation gap.

Jette Goldie, a 47-year-old Edinburgh civil servant, who has attended Highlander conventions in Europe and North America, said: “Animé is very much in vogue these days. Some of it is wonderful, Howl’s Moving Castle for example, some is more ordinary, just like the rest of the movie industry. It will be interesting to see how Highlander would be handled in anime. Done properly it ought to translate well.”

Kawajiri’s work is already familiar to Scottish fans of the medium. At Edinburgh’s Manga Club, Ollie Elliott, the artist who completed the club’s visuals, has no doubt at all about the movie’s potential.

Another of Kawajiri’s most famous films is Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which shares certain elements with Highlander. “Vampire Hunter D is very important to anime,” says Elliott. “It crosses that futuristic-medieval border that the Japanese are so fond of. It has that sci-fi, techno-junkie element.” The prospect of Kawajiri’s Highlander was “very exciting” he adds.

To date, the director’s most popular film is Ninja Scroll, an epic story of a young wanderer confronted with magic and monsters in ancient Japan. Although it is animation, it is so violent that it was cut by the British censor before its video release in 1995. The decision was later reviewed and the film passed in its entirety last year.

“It’s a really great art form to have as a front to the music. A lot of music culture taps into that style of artwork and videos,” says G-Mac, who runs Edinburgh’s Manga Club. “It is always going to appeal to people because it’s something different and slightly exotic.”

Different, exotic, and appealing: the Highlander’s appeal throughout all the ages. Animé can take that message to the world.

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