Category: Features

August 18, 2022 · 0 comments

by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood. A country opens up to the West and goes through a flowering of political and social liberalism before reactionaries force a backlash, democracy flounders, and a repressive regime takes the reins. This could describe Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, or Japan from the Meiji Restoration to the 1945 […]

August 16, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. So many things came to mind when I saw the title of Asumiko Nakamura’s Maiden Railways manga for the first time. And I thought, well, it’s probably a thing about girls who are trains, or trains who are girls, or a bunch of witches who moonlight as train conductors, but no. It’s […]

August 12, 2022 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. One of the carriages on the Kyoto shinkansen is a mauve hellscape of high-pitched voices and big eyes, devoted to the irritating but mercifully fictional anime mascot character Momonga. Every now and then the duelling assassins in David Leitch’s Bullet Train have to traverse it, subject to invasive entreaties to be someone’s […]

August 10, 2022 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Masakazu Ishiguro’s manga Heavenly Delusion begins with super double-bluff opening chapter, in which a bunch of gormless school-children, tutored by a robot, complain about an unexpected maths test. It’s only when one of them tries to come up with a word for it, unaware that the term “pop quiz” even exists already, […]

August 7, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Festooned with prizes, including the judges’ award at last year’s Scotland Loves Anime and the Japan Academy Award for Excellence in Animation, Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko now reaches British cinemas. As her name inadvertently suggests, Nikuko is a creature of fleshy delights – passionate, enthusiastic, bubbly and obsessed with foods. […]