Murphy’s Irish Stout: Last Orders

Murphy’s Irish Stout: Last Orders (1997)

I’m not a fan of too much corporate involvement in art.

Obviously, many studios are big corporations with commercial concerns and I’m not going to erroneously claim that popular = bad.

However, when I heard about the Murphy’s ‘Irish Stout’ advertisement Last Orders I did pause. It is a great, one minute clip with fantastic direction and a funny pay-off but again, some of the best folks from Japan’s animation industry of the day hired to make an advertisement for a drug?

Of course it’s hardly up to me to judge folks for the jobs they take on and again, this cyberpunk beer ad is pretty great. It clearly evokes Ghost in the Shell, and has that film to thank for its existence, since the UK company probably wouldn’t have commissioned Last Orders otherwise.

I only recently stumbled across the spot on Youtube and after a quick search I found some (hopefully accurate) production credits:

• Director – Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Blood: The Last Vampire).
• Character Design – Kazuchika Kise (Ghost in the Shell)
• Background Art – Hiromasa Ogura (Jin-Roh)

Only takes a minute to watch of course 🙂