Features 682
Books: Manga & Disability
By Jonathan Clements. Reframing Disability in Manga by Yoshiko Okuyama is a well-timed integration of the study of Japanese comics and portrayals of the disabled, powerfully conceived as an off-the-peg classroom text. It could readily function as a textbook on a dedicated course, but is formatted in a smart topical manner throughout that would lend […]
Books: Pure Invention
By Jonathan Clements. Matt Alt’s Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World is a work of startling originality. Like the dozen inventions and creations it profiles, it takes already-familiar technology and repurposes it to new and innovative ends, using everyday objects as springboards to discuss the peculiarities of Japanese culture and the global […]
Magic Knight Rayearth
By Shelley Pallis. Three teenage girls, from different schools, are on an outing to the Tokyo Tower when they are whisked away to the fantasy land of Cephiro. They are destined to become the Magic Knights, a trio of warriors promised in prophecy, who must save Princess Emeraude from her imprisonment at the hands of […]
Royal Space Force
Jonathan Clements on some of the battles behind The Wings of Honneamise. Nobody knows who it was who walked into a Tokyo coffee shop, one summer day in 1984, and ordered a mix of Assam and Darjeeling, known in Japan as a Royal Milk Tea. But there was a cluster of earnest young men at […]
Shinkai the Ad Man
By Andrew Osmond. Makoto Shinkai’s visual style is a commercial in its own right, maybe the most lucrative brand in anime today. So it’s fitting that Shinkai’s work has been bound up with advertising for more than a decade. Think of the lightning editing in Shinkai’s films, allowing for super-compressed story points, absolutely ideal for […]