Features 529
Twin Star Exorcists 2
By Shelley Pallis. Grotesque monsters known as Impurities reside in Magano, a realm parallel to the present day. Exorcists purify these evil apparitions to protect the people. Rokuro Enmadou is opposed to becoming an exorcist, even though he has the talent to be one, but an oracle gives him the title of “Twin Star Exorcist,” […]
Books: African Samurai
By Jonathan Clements. The temple is on fire. The warlord Nobunaga makes his last stand against the henchmen of a traitorous underling. Hearing someone kicking open a side-door, three attacking samurai rush in to execute an escapee, only to face a terrifying, ash-smeared demon. “In person they had never seen before a shadow so tall, […]
Books: Totoro for Two
By Motoko Tamamuro. For months after the release of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Hirokatsu Kihara waits for news of the next production for Studio Ghibli. The studio suddenly gets lively when the announcement comes that the next film will be Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata. However, nobody says anything to […]
Books: On Kurosawa
By Jasper Sharp. The robustly-designed and impressively laid-out new tome On Kurosawa: A Tribute to the Master Director by Peter Tasker inevitably prompts the same questions I raised a year ago in my review of Paul Anderer’s Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Does the world really need another book on this director, and what exactly is it about […]
Blue Spring
by Jeremy Clarke. Teenage high school movie Blue Spring (2001) centres on the leader of a violent boys’ gang in their final year at school. The nonchalant Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) has befriended Aoki (Hirofumi Arai in his debut role) since the latter first joined his class in their infancy: these days Aoki is Kujo’s number […]