Features 438
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
by Jeremy Clarke. Portrait of the artist at age 66. A new documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda finds musician Ryuichi Sakamoto working on a new album following a third degree throat cancer diagnosis and time off work for treatment. At the same time, it presents a select chronological appraisal of his career from Yellow Magic Orchestra […]
Period Pieces: Mai Mai Miracle
By Andrew Osmond. The story of Mai Mai Miracle takes place in a very specific time, 1955, with some excursions back a millennium into the past. The film’s setting is Hofu, a coastal city in Yamaguchi prefecture at the bottom of Japan’s main island, Honshu. As the script mentions, in previous centuries the area used […]
Books: Anime Supremacy!
By Andrew Osmond. Anime Supremacy!, a translated Japanese novel published by Vertical, takes on the real-life side of the anime industry, more frantic and quirky than any 2D antics. The author, Mizuki Tsujimura, is not an anime pro, which would seem to reduce the book’s interest greatly. But wait! The last pages have an impressive […]
The Toys That Made Us
By Raz Greenberg. In case you missed the hype, The Toys that Made Us is a Netflix documentary show devoted to successful toy brands, made from an unapologetic fannish perspective. With each episode telling the story of a different brand, the show’s producers treat such cultural landmarks as Lego and cynical moneymakers as Masters of […]
The Best of Impossible Worlds
By Mitchell Lineham. After the global success of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, virtual reality is back in style, but in the anime world, it never really went away. While Spielberg’s movie appeals to fans for its deep-seated references to pop culture, Japanese animation offers plenty of virtual reality stories that resonate more with today’s […]