Features 554
The Relative Worlds
By Jeremy Clarke. Teenage romance, parallel worlds and dysfunctional families are the main ingredients of The Relative Worlds, Yuhei Sakuragi’s uneasy cross between a mawkish teenage romance boy and a sci-fi action picture in the James Cameron mould. The romantic, emotional parts are gentle and almost hesitant. The science fiction, fantasy and action parts are […]
Ride Your Wave
By Shelley Pallis. Hinako has moved to Chiba to pursue her studies as an oceanographer – she just loves the sea, unaware that Minato and Wasabi on the shoreline have been watching her early morning surfing ventures with wide-eyed amazement. Both of them are trainee firemen, but its Minato who gets the chance to play […]
The Trouble with Budori Gusuco
By Jonathan Clements. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the author Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) on Japanese literature, and anime. He was still in his thirties when he died, a largely unknown poet living in provincial obscurity, and only really read outside local newspapers after the publication of a Complete Works a decade later. […]
Patema Inverted
By Andrew Osmond One of the century’s great philosophers sang that everything you know is wrong, black is white, up is down and short is long. Patema Inverted, by director Yasuhiro Yoshiura, confines itself to Weird Al’s middle axiom, that up is down. The heroine Patema begins in an underground world, falling ‘down’ a chasm […]
Akio Jissoji: The Buddhist Trilogy
By Jasper Sharp. It is a ballsy act for a company to put out a four-film box set of titles made almost half a century ago that have never had any form of home video release outside Japan, all made by a director whose name is unknown outside the rarefied circles of Japanese film specialism. […]