Features 690
Books: My Heart Sutra
By Jonathan Clements. Early in the evening on 12th November 2019, on his way home from an interpreting job in Silicon Valley, Frederik L. Schodt was hit by a moving car. It was a moment that could have easily deprived this world of the author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. “A car […]
Books: Erotic Comics in Japan
By Jonathan Clements. This review is definitely Not Suitable For Work. Kaoru Nagayama’s Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga, in fact, comes loaded with so many explicit images, often of a frankly triggering nature, that I am unsurprised it is not only published at a weeb-scaringly high price, but by a university press […]
Burst City
By Tom Wilmot. Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are just a few of the names that come to mind when thinking of acclaimed Japanese cult filmmakers in the late twentieth century. However, without the work of another incredibly influential auteur, we may not have these directors as we know them: Sogo Ishii. Distribution […]
Warning from Space
by Jeremy Clarke. The first Japanese science fiction film to be made in colour, Warning from Space (1956) features peaceful star-shaped aliens, one of whom transforms herself into a nightclub singer to make contact with Japanese scientists. Not that the aliens possess of any discernible gender themselves, but the human likenesses into which they are […]
Gundam NT
By Andrew Osmond. As of writing, Gundam NT, also known as Gundam Narrative, is the newest cinema Gundam, opening in Japan in November 2018. This blog frequently highlights the fact that many Gundam anime are designed to be accessible to newcomers. Gundam NT, quite honestly, isn’t one of them. Firstly, the film’s very much a […]