Features 575
Books: The Last Children of Tokyo
By Jonathan Clements. The kids are not all right. The kids are sickly and enfeebled, some of them barely able to walk, with brittle bones and dozens of allergies. They have been raised on poisoned milk and contaminated food, in a Japan without Tokyo – Japan’s capital city having been rendered uninhabitable by a disaster. […]
The Story of Hong Gil-Dong
By Andrew Osmond. Anyone interested in world animation, and especially in how it developed in Asia, should check out an upcoming London screening of The Story of Hong Gil-Dong, a 52 year-old animated feature made in 1967. It’ll be shown at noon on Saturday 9th November at East Finchley’s Phoenix Cinema (you can book here; […]
Dragon Dentist
Kazuya Tsurumaki on his film. Kazuya Tsurumaki is known for FLCL, Gunbuster 2, and the Rebuild of Evangelion series, among others. He got involved with The Dragon Dentist (streaming now on All4) after meeting the original writer Otaro Maijo on Japan Animator Expo in 2014. Using the short pilot film screened at that time, this […]
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
By Andrew Osmond. Early in Jin-roh, a young girl who’s more child than woman slumps against a wall in a sewer, a dark limbo of brick and water. She’s been running a long time, but there’s no escape. She looks up to see a soldier watching her, with infra-red eyes in a metal helmet. The […]
Books: Puppets, Gods and Brands
By Jonathan Clements. The latest book in the Asia Pop! Series, Teri Silvio’s Puppets, Gods and Brands, is a surprising, vivacious and convincing anthropology of animation, which places animation ideals and fannish philosophies at the very centre of modern times. For Silvio, the idea of imparting life into inanimate objects – of animating them – […]