Category: Features

December 18, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. In customary fashion for the time of year, the Japan Foundation has just announced the programme for its annual touring film season to give us something to look forward to in these dark and joyless winter months. With 20 titles heading to 22 venues across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between […]

December 15, 2019 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Noriyuki Abe, the long – very long – serving director of Bleach, offers up the new series Divine Gate. Handsomely visualized by Bleach’s studio Pierrot, and based on a smartphone game, Divine Gate is the kind of anime that can look impenetrably complex when you look at some of its synopses online, […]

December 12, 2019 · 3 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Patrick W. Galbraith’s Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan begins with an advert that depicts a man who is, in the words of Lawrence Eng, a “reluctant insider”, a slave of the rat-race who has an ace up his sleeve. Back in his bachelor pad, he has a virtual girlfriend […]

December 10, 2019 · 1 comment

By Andrew Osmond To shed light on Plastic Memories, it’s worth remembering a comment by Yasuhiro Yoshiura, who directed the android anime Time of Eve (and the gravity-defying Patema Inverted). “In the UK and US, robots are robots and they are completely different from human beings. There’s also a kind of Frankenstein complex where they […]

December 6, 2019 · 2 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Teenage runaway Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo) is living hand-to-mouth in Tokyo, writing for a tabloid newspaper about conspiracy theories and the occult. One magical story seems to come true, when burger-bar waitress Hina (Nana Mori) is revealed to have the ability to control the weather. For a short period, in a limited space […]