Category: Features
June 17, 2018 · 0 comments
Animerama
[WARNING: Content potentially Not Safe For Work] By Jasper Sharp. The three titles in Mushi Pro’s short-lived “Animerama” series, A Thousand & One Nights (1969), Cleopatra (1970) and Belladonna of Sadness (1973), arrived at an interesting juncture in the history of Japanese animation and Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Production.
June 15, 2018 · 0 comments
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
by Jeremy Clarke. Portrait of the artist at age 66. A new documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda finds musician Ryuichi Sakamoto working on a new album following a third degree throat cancer diagnosis and time off work for treatment. At the same time, it presents a select chronological appraisal of his career from Yellow Magic Orchestra […]
June 12, 2018 · 0 comments
Period Pieces: Mai Mai Miracle
By Andrew Osmond. The story of Mai Mai Miracle takes place in a very specific time, 1955, with some excursions back a millennium into the past. The film’s setting is Hofu, a coastal city in Yamaguchi prefecture at the bottom of Japan’s main island, Honshu. As the script mentions, in previous centuries the area used […]
June 9, 2018 · 0 comments
Books: Anime Supremacy!
By Andrew Osmond. Anime Supremacy!, a translated Japanese novel published by Vertical, takes on the real-life side of the anime industry, more frantic and quirky than any 2D antics. The author, Mizuki Tsujimura, is not an anime pro, which would seem to reduce the book’s interest greatly. But wait! The last pages have an impressive […]
June 6, 2018 · 0 comments
The Toys That Made Us
By Raz Greenberg. In case you missed the hype, The Toys that Made Us is a Netflix documentary show devoted to successful toy brands, made from an unapologetic fannish perspective. With each episode telling the story of a different brand, the show’s producers treat such cultural landmarks as Lego and cynical moneymakers as Masters of […]