Category: Features
June 22, 2022 · 0 comments
Books: By Your Side
By Jonathan Clements. The inauguration of Barazoku (“Rose Tribe”), a magazine for gay men in 1971, brought with it a sop to the ladies, in the form of a page for lesbians, for which author Ito Bungaku coined the term yuri-zoku, the “Lily Tribe.” Ever since, lesbian media have officially been a thing in Japan, […]
June 19, 2022 · 0 comments
Manga: Hikaru in the Light
By Jonathan Clements. Hikaru likes to sing while she is sweeping up at work. But she is good at it. Good enough to turn it in to a career? Nobody would take it that seriously, until her old friend Ran-chan returns from the Big City and announces that she is going to audition for a […]
June 16, 2022 · 0 comments
Violet Evergarden: The Movie
By Jeannette Ng. Violet Evergarden: The Movie is a film about second chances, piecing oneself together after tragedy and allowing oneself the luxury of love despite the overwhelming guilt of survival. The very real tragedy of the arson attack on Kyoto Animation’s studio haunts the film. It is one of the reasons for the film’s […]
June 13, 2022 · 0 comments
Books: Otherside Picnic
By Shelley Pallis. Sorawo Kamikoshi is a loner, a twenty-year-old nerd studying cultural anthropology at a Saitama university, whose hobby is exploring spooky places. Nor are these randomly and doubtfully “haunted houses” – she has found numerous portals to an alternate world, the titular “Otherside” where all sorts of rumours, urban legends, horror stories and […]
June 10, 2022 · 0 comments
Crazy Thunder Road
by Jeremy Clarke. Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980). This was his Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got […]