Author: Jonathan Clements

July 18, 2016 · 1 comment

By Hugh David. There has never been a better time to be a media fan. Commentaries and spin-offs, blogs and podcasts can open up entire worlds of fandom, even to the hopeless couch potato. Long gone are the days when fan publications relied on obsessive collections of memorabilia, and the need to remember details a […]

July 15, 2016 · 0 comments

By Tom Smith. Anime music doesn’t get much more “anime” than STYLE FIVE, a super group formed especially for the ending themes to a series all about breaststrokes, front crawls and doggy paddles; Free! Eternal Summer. The series kicks off with a blaster of an opening song from OLDCODEX. That’s the band fronted by Free! […]

July 12, 2016 · 0 comments

Jonathan Clements reviews a book on Japan’s landmark censorship cases. It began with newsboys in the Tokyo streets with stacks of a racy foreign book, wearing jackets that proclaimed “WARNING! CHATTERLEY.” For the first big test of Japan’s new free-speech constitution was the publication of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1951, when the country […]

July 9, 2016 · 0 comments

By Jeremy Clarke. Sion Sono’s wonderfully insane, four-hour art-house epic Love Exposure (2008) made great waves on its UK release with its heady brew of father-son relationships, Catholicism, sin, teen gangs, martial arts stunts, up-skirt photography, violence, swordplay, castration, porno movie production, religious cults and more. Nothing in his prior directorial career had made quite […]

July 6, 2016 · 0 comments

By Paul Browne. Sogo Amagi is a denizen of the world of Gift whose primary hobby is excavating rare crystals from abandoned mines. Sogo’s quiet life of intellectual pursuit is, however, put into disarray when he encounters the mysterious blue-haired Felia deep within the ground itself… If you like your anime to be everything from […]