Features 682
Turn A Gundam
By Andrew Osmond. The shortest way to describe Turn A Gundam is as the steampunk Gundam. It doesn’t start in a space war, nor on a futuristic Earth. Rather, the setting seems to be Earth of a bygone age, around the start of the twentieth century, with airships, period costumes, and vintage planes and cars. […]
Books: Spirited Away
By Jonathan Clements. The BFI Film Classics list has had a number of ups and downs in its lifespan. I remember the original releases in 1992, which attracted real heavy-hitters like Salman Rushdie writing about The Wizard of Oz, and then a series of seemingly random and often contradictory directives, as it bounced from the […]
CG in Anime
By Andrew Osmond. Last year, the film magazine Little White Lies interviewed Shoji Kawamori, famed for his creative role in Macross. He was asked what future he saw for hand-drawn animation in anime. His reply was blunt. “I imagine,” Kawamori said, “that in about ten or twenty years, (hand-drawn animation) will be heading in the […]
Birthday Wonderland
By Andrew Osmond. Keiichi Hara’s feature film Birthday Wonderland plays like a very traditional family fantasy, which seems to be part of its point. Given that the film tells the story of a Japanese girl travelling into a magic world, it inevitably raises thoughts of Spirited Away – which was, among other things, a plea […]
Tamako Market
By Andrew Osmond. Anime Limited’s release of Kyoto Animation’s Tamako Market carries both the original 12-part TV series and its cinema continuation, the film Tamako Love Story. It’s a tale of the title girl Tamako, her neighbours and neighbourhood, her family and friends. Like many soaps, sitcoms and slice-of-life anime, it offers the viewer a […]