Category: Features

September 9, 2018 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons will prove to be a vital core text in understanding the history of anime and manga fandom. This is not merely for its incisive analysis of the transformations of the word otaku over the last thirty years, but also for its detailed […]

September 7, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. According to the Anime Encyclopedia, Junjo Romantica has been distributed to China, Korea, Russia and the Arab world. Now, the debut of the TV version in Britain marks perhaps the first UK commercial release of an anime that’s openly and explicitly a sexual love story between men – what’s often called a […]

September 4, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Sound! Euphonium might be subtitled This is not K-On!, and not just as a joke. This series really isn’t another K-On!, though the parallels are obvious. Both shows focus on schoolgirls in music clubs; both were animated by the feted Kyoto Animation with the same broad “look” and palette, and they share […]

September 1, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. It’s said that bad books make good films (and vice versa). Perfect Blue makes that case forcibly. Satoshi Kon’s film version is a landmark in animated horror, subjecting a vividly sympathetic protagonist to fiendish mind-games. But the source book is plain bad, descending into infantile guignol that’s less perverted than pre-potty trained. […]

August 30, 2018 · 0 comments

By Raz Greenberg. Based on Akane Shimizu’s original manga, David Production’s Cells at Work! quickly became one of the highlights of the current anime season, especially due to its innovative concept: portraying the cells within the human body as anthropomorphised characters, with a particular emphasis given to the daring deliveries of oxygen by the red […]