Features 575
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
By Jonathan Clements. Mars is under siege! Just before Halloween 2071, a terrorist bomb destroys a tanker truck on Highway One, close to a densely-populated crater city. There are casualties up to half a mile from the blast – 500 killed or injured by what appears to be a biochemical weapon. The reward for the […]
Books: Debating Otaku
By Jonathan Clements. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons will prove to be a vital core text in understanding the history of anime and manga fandom. This is not merely for its incisive analysis of the transformations of the word otaku over the last thirty years, but also for its detailed […]
Junjo Romantica
By Andrew Osmond. According to the Anime Encyclopedia, Junjo Romantica has been distributed to China, Korea, Russia and the Arab world. Now, the debut of the TV version in Britain marks perhaps the first UK commercial release of an anime that’s openly and explicitly a sexual love story between men – what’s often called a […]
Sound! Euphonium
By Andrew Osmond. Sound! Euphonium might be subtitled This is not K-On!, and not just as a joke. This series really isn’t another K-On!, though the parallels are obvious. Both shows focus on schoolgirls in music clubs; both were animated by the feted Kyoto Animation with the same broad “look” and palette, and they share […]
Books: Perfect Blue
By Andrew Osmond. It’s said that bad books make good films (and vice versa). Perfect Blue makes that case forcibly. Satoshi Kon’s film version is a landmark in animated horror, subjecting a vividly sympathetic protagonist to fiendish mind-games. But the source book is plain bad, descending into infantile guignol that’s less perverted than pre-potty trained. […]