Author: Jonathan Clements

November 11, 2021 · 1 comment

By Andrew Osmond. Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon spends its first moments fooling you into thinking that it’ll be a gritty military drama. There’s a flashforward to a terrible battle. There are ruined city buildings, a wounded youth in a school uniform facing death, and a little witch-girl intoning “Congratulations” with flat menace. And […]

November 8, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Those silly do-gooders in Akihabara, making a computer game company take down a mere advertising billboard on the grounds it might offend, shock or otherwise discombobulate passing members of the public. Then again, since the billboard was advertising a game called More! Knock ‘Em Up! Blazing Boobs Super Erotic App School, I […]

November 5, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. The family drama is a staple of Japanese cinema and has been for many years. From the shōshimin-eiga (lower middle-class films) of the 1930s to the many masterpieces of Yasujiro Ozu, Japan has a proud lineage of reserved and moving melodramas. Funuke Show Some Love You Losers! is no such film. Based on the […]

November 2, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jeannette Ng. Interviews with Monster Girls by PETOS starts off more or less as its title promises. Tetsuo Takahashi is a biology teacher who has long been fascinated by the existence of demihumans. Some combination of narrative contrivance and fate has resulted in him sharing a school with four of them — Hikari Takanashi […]

October 30, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. The height of the tokusatsu (special-effects) era in 1960s Japan is best remembered for the slew of giant monster movies that dominated cinemas. Studio Toho’s titanic Godzilla franchise topped the box office, while competitor Daiei found success with the Gamera and Daimajin series. However, while kaiju made the headlines, this period also saw the production of many, more modestly budgeted tokusatsu films […]