Features 529
Books: Law & Justice
By Jonathan Clements. Reading the contributor biographies for the collection Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime-Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters, one gets the sense that this book was put together by a bunch of young, ardent scholars determined to have some fun. I see a lot of PhD candidacies and associate […]
Before We Vanish
by Jeremy Clarke. Part relationship drama, part love story, part comedy, part science fiction, Before We Vanish is the latest movie by Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa to hit UK Blu-ray and may be his strangest ever film. This is saying a lot for a director whose filmography includes horror movies like Pulse (2001), ghost stories […]
Pumpkin & Mayonnaise
By Andrew Osmond. Some live-action manga adaptations proclaim they are manga adaptations in each and every frame, with lurid colours and effects, absurd costumes and acting that would look broad in a panto. Pumpkin and Mayonnaise, which is screening around the UK and Ireland as part of the Japan Foundation’s Touring Film Programme for 2019, […]
Alita: Battle Angel
By Andrew Osmond. Midway through Alita: Battle Angel, the cyborg heroine realises she’s provoked the mother of all bar brawls – with a crowd of horribly beweaponed cyborgs – and now must kick an ironmonger’s worth of metal ass. She cautions her human boyfriend Hugo (Keean Johnson) to stand back, way back. This line of […]
The Scythian Lamb
By Roxy Simons. “You don’t fear me?” Ryuhei Matsuda’s Miyakoshi asks council worker Tsukisue (Ryo Nishikido) when he arrives in the sleepy town of Uobuka, his new home for the next ten years. “You and I are humans,” Tsukisue responds, despite his reservations about the sudden influx of ‘suspicious’ people in the town. Miyakoshi is […]