Andrew Osmond 40
Gundam Thunderbolt
By Andrew Osmond. Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky may be the closest that anime has ever come to producing a full-blown Vietnam film. The Gundam franchise has always been about war, but Thunderbolt suggests its makers were marathoning films like Apocalypse Now and Born on the Fourth of July. Thunderbolt makes a “gritty” Hollywood franchise film […]
Calamity of a Zombie Girl
By Andrew Osmond. Calamity of a Zombie Girl is a horror film. If we’re being more precise, it’s a schlocky horror picture show, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s a film in which college-age students investigate an occult mystery, uncover something they shouldn’t, and then start dying messily. There will be blood. Heads will be […]
March Comes in Like a Lion
By Andrew Osmond. March comes in like a lion resists obvious categorisation. You could call it a “slice of life” anime, but that’s a pretty useless heading these days; Wikipedia’s list of such anime covers everything from Azumanga Daioh to A Centaur’s Life via From Up on Poppy Hill. Pinpointing March more, I’d say it’s […]
Gundam 00
By Andrew Osmond. The first thing to stress about Gundam 00 is that newbies can most definitely start here. While it’s technically part of the venerable Gundam franchise, it’s also a “new” series, with a new world and characters. Indeed, 00 was perhaps made deliberately to draw in viewers, Japanese and foreign, who hadn’t seen […]
Junjo Romantica
By Andrew Osmond. According to the Anime Encyclopedia, Junjo Romantica has been distributed to China, Korea, Russia and the Arab world. Now, the debut of the TV version in Britain marks perhaps the first UK commercial release of an anime that’s openly and explicitly a sexual love story between men – what’s often called a […]