Features 566
Birthday Wonderland
By Jonathan Clements. Listless and depressed, and desperate to avoid the latest trend-conscious schoolgirl drama at school, Akane (Mayu Matsuoka) feigns an illness, which her mother Midori (Kumiko Aso) seems ready to indulge – it is going to be her birthday soon after all. Instead, she sends the pouting teenager over to Aunt Chii’s junk […]
Redline
By Jonathan Clements. It’s all over for the good-hearted racer boy JP when his souped-up Trans Am crashes at the finish of the illegal Yellowline contest on planet Dorothy. Meanwhile his double-crossing colleague Frisbee is merrily counting the cash from an evil interstellar syndicate that has rigged the race. The next race – the highly […]
The Relative Worlds
By Jeremy Clarke. Teenage romance, parallel worlds and dysfunctional families are the main ingredients of The Relative Worlds, Yuhei Sakuragi’s uneasy cross between a mawkish teenage romance boy and a sci-fi action picture in the James Cameron mould. The romantic, emotional parts are gentle and almost hesitant. The science fiction, fantasy and action parts are […]
Ride Your Wave
By Shelley Pallis. Hinako has moved to Chiba to pursue her studies as an oceanographer – she just loves the sea, unaware that Minato and Wasabi on the shoreline have been watching her early morning surfing ventures with wide-eyed amazement. Both of them are trainee firemen, but its Minato who gets the chance to play […]
The Trouble with Budori Gusuco
By Jonathan Clements. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the author Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) on Japanese literature, and anime. He was still in his thirties when he died, a largely unknown poet living in provincial obscurity, and only really read outside local newspapers after the publication of a Complete Works a decade later. […]