Yoshiki: Under the Sky
by Helen McCarthy. Classical pianist, hard rock drummer, guitarist, composer, songwriter, producer, visual kei pioneer, founder of two record labels, fashion designer, collaborator with brands from Baccarat to Hello Kitty and beyond, keynote speaker at a Stanford University conference on the future of social tech – all this, plus a 13-year partnership with a Napa […]
Harmonie
By Zoe Crombie. A shy boy admires a popular girl in his class, a safe distance away from her macho ‘boyfriend’ and judgemental peers, hoping that she may just be different from the others. This isn’t an uncommon set up for an anime, particularly one set in a high school, but Harmonie takes an intriguing […]
Patlabor the Movie
By Andrew Osmond. Mamoru Oshii, the director of Patlabor the Movie, once described his 1989 film as pop entertainment. Any fan of Oshii, best known for Ghost in the Shell, knows that’s a huge undersell for what is an extremely complex, thoughtful film. But perhaps Oshii was referring to how Patlabor the Movie ticks a […]
Books: This Great Stage of Fools
By Jonathan Clements. “Aren’t you making a mistake,” asks the lady selling cinema tickets. “Almost certainly,” sighs Alan Booth, a man who came to Japan to study classical theatre, and who finds himself glumly commissioned to sit through a ghastly Japanese teen movie so he can review it for a newspaper. No, says the ticket […]
Gunbuster for Beginners
By Andrew Osmond. Many decades before Gunbuster, French director Jean-Luc Godard declared, “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” In the 1980s a gang of Japanese geeks declared, all you need for an anime is a girl and a mecha… Okay, make that a girl and tons of mecha, in […]
Books: The Japan Lights
By Jonathan Clements. Scottish-born Iain Maloney writes of the way that he always needs a body of water somewhere nearby to feel grounded, to know which way is up. Living and working in Japan’s landlocked Gifu prefecture, he becomes aware that many of Japan’s early modern coastal defences, including a ring of vital lighthouses, were […]
Manga: The Witch of Thistle Castle
By Shelley Pallis. Of all the cities in the world where a witch might be able to blend in, Edinburgh is probably a prime candidate. Marie Blackwood is the “Black Witch of Albion”, a notorious sorceress who may be much older than she looks, who tries to maintain a low profile by running a magic […]
Japan: Myths to Manga
By Helen McCarthy. Young V&A, formerly the Museum of Childhood, opened its doors again on 1st July 2023 after a revamp that took seven years to plan and design. This is its first exhibition since the opening, and every aspect of its presentation and marketing has been engineered to establish itself with its target audience […]
Paprika
By Andrew Osmond. If you want a soundbite that describes Paprika fairly well, an obvious one would be “Spirited Away for adults.” Okay, that’s patronising, as Spirited Away was perfectly able to appeal to adults too. A better tag for this similarly dazzling dream-fantasy would be “Spirited Away with adults.” That’s true both in that […]
Blue Giant
By Shelley Pallis. Country boy Dai Miyamoto (voiced by Yuki Tamada) moves to the big city of Tokyo in the hope of making it big as a jazz saxophonist. The end. But this is jazz – it’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there… Blue Giant, in its anime form, is merely a […]