Features 474
Interview: Shouji Gatou
By Andrew Osmond. Hands up if Full Metal Panic! was among the first anime you saw. The first 24-part FMP series, introducing the tempestuously strong-willed schoolgirl Kaname and her schoolboy/soldier guardian Sosuke, was made back in 2002. It was followed a year later by the far lighter-hearted Fumoffu, while the action-orientated The Second Raid came […]
Books: Max Fleischer
By Raz Greenberg. 76 years after they were forced out of their own studio, a move that marked the end of their prominent role in the development of American animation, the legacy of animation pioneers brothers Max (1883-1972) and David (1894-1979) Fleischer is still alive and kicking, and nowhere is this legacy more evident than […]
Books: Ishiro Honda
By Jasper Sharp. Ishiro Honda is an easy filmmaker to ridicule. Here is a man whose name, more by accident than design, looks set to be forever identified with a certain giant fire-breathing lizard, and by extension Japan’s entire home-grown strain of giant monster movies that followed in its wake, featuring men in rubber suits […]
Relatives for Rent
By Andrew Osmond. This April, an eye-poppingly extraordinary article about Japan appeared, not in a specialist otaku magazine, but in that august English-language journal, The New Yorker. Its opening line looks like it should start a science-fiction story, like Orwell’s clocks striking thirteen or Ballard’s protagonist eating dog in High Rise. The article, written by […]
Suffering of Ninko
By Jasper Sharp. Ninko is a zealous young Buddhist monk of the Edo era. The cause of his suffering, his cross to bear so to speak, is that he is catnip to the ladies. And oh, how he suffers! A simple trip into town on his daily alms round runs the risk of him being […]