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Asei Kobayashi (1932-2021)
Asei Kobayashi, who died on 30th May from a heart attack, was an unlikely candidate for musical composer, or actor, or game-show champion…. Pushed by his parents into studying to be a doctor, he transferred without telling them to the department of economics at Keio University, where his classmates included another future composer, Isao Tomita. […]
No Returns
By Jeannette Ng. Alice in Wonderland remains a towering influence on fantasy, both in English and in Japanese. Europe-inspired fantasy lands can take on new meaning in a Japanese media fascinated with the strange and exotic West, where even Paris and London can sometimes seem like alternate dimensions. Anime adaptations of English children’s classics, often […]
Middle Earth: The Anime?
By Andrew Osmond. An anime cinema feature film of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth has been announced, entitled The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. At last, an anime film with a title that Japanese people will find as hard to pronounce as the rest of us! It’s directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the man […]
Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll
By Jeannette Ng. An “Auto Memory Doll” was originally the name given to the typewriters of Telsis, invented by a man who wanted to help his novelist wife to continue writing after she became blind. But much as “computers” were once both the machines that computed and the women who operated them, Auto Memory Doll […]
Penguindrum
By Andrew Osmond. In Penguindrum, a dorky penguin hat – that’s a hat that looks like a penguin, not one made out of penguins – brings a beautiful girl back to life. This miracle starts an adventure that’s insanely odd even by the standards of anime. The girl is Himari Takakura, the angelic sister of […]