Books: Rediscovered Classics
By Zoe Crombie. Anime has taken inspiration from Western cultures throughout much of its history, from Astro Boy’s Disney-inspired aesthetics to the gorgeous European locales of films like Howl’s Moving Castle, and one of the most important productions in this vein is the World Masterpiece Theater series of adaptations of Western children’s books. Bringing new […]
Black Tight Killers
By Tom Wilmot. Unlikely as it might be, the late Yasuharu Hasebe is one of Japan’s best-represented filmmakers overseas, with several of the director’s works making their way west over the past twenty or so years. Radiance Films continues the trend of bringing Hasebe’s trademark action movies to Blu-ray with the release of his electrifying […]
Books: Marriage, Divorce and Beyond
By Jonathan Clements. Lina is rushed to the infirmary at the edge of life, her body terribly battered and sliced by an encounter with a lethal dragon, surrounded by wizards chanting healing spells and administering stasis commands. It is only as she slowly recovers, her memories of the battle mercifully lost, that her carers start […]
Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl
by Jeremy Clarke. Deriving its odd title from a literal translation of the leads’ surnames, Katsuhito Ishii’s highly original gangster movie from 1998 is based on a familiar plot: a man runs off with the mob’s money, and a lady companion. Or, as pioneering French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard once put it: all you […]
Beautiful Bones: Sakurako’s Investigation
By Zoe Crombie. Genius detective Sakurako Kujo is constantly surrounded by death, regularly finding the bones of murder victims that aid her constant study of skeletons and forensics. Accompanying Sakurako on her deadly excursions is high school student Shotaro Tatewaki, a grounding influence who keeps some of Sakurako’s more questionable impulses in check. Together, the […]
Mutsumi Inomata (1960-2024)
The artist Mutsumi Inomata, who died on 10th March, has been a ubiquitous presence in the anime world for the last forty years, even though she distanced herself from actual animation in the late 1980s. When interviewed about her character designs on Weathering Continent in 1993, she admitted that she already had left much of […]
Lupin III.6
By Andrew Osmond. Early in Lupin the Third Part 6, there’s an appearance of a bridge which Londoners will find familiar. Hungerford Bridge is one of the capital’s less showy landmarks, crossing the Thames between the South Bank and Charing Cross Station. There’s a central railway bridge and two wide footbridges either side – the […]
Golden Time
By Zoe Crombie. Banri Tada is a bright young student at a private law school who has just finished convalescing from a fall he experienced after his high school graduation that left him with no memory of his life or relationships from before that moment. Fortunately, he finds a friend in fellow first-year student Mitsuo […]
The Boy and the Oscar
By Andrew Osmond. Hooray, The Boy and the Heron has won! When it snagged the Best Animated Feature Oscar last night (sorry, Spider-Verse fans), it marked only the second Oscar victory for an anime feature film. The first time was twenty-one years ago, when Spirited Away, also directed by Hayao Miyazaki, won Best Animated Feature […]
Tarako (1960-2024)
“Tarako” Isono, who died on 4th March, would often contend against the media’s assessment of her. Repeatedly in interviews, she would assert that she identified as a “singer-songwriter”, in spite of constant descriptions of her as a “voice actress”. But her career as a performer and lyricist, while manifold and long-running, was destined to be […]