Category: Features

July 8, 2021 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Book-length studies of anime TV shows are rare indeed. Critics tend to favour the shorter hours and wider footprint of writing about single anime movies. Writing in general on television often seems to be a mug’s game, with sales even to libraries rarely justifying the investment of authors’ efforts. It’s hence not […]

July 5, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. By the mid-1970s, the decline of the Japanese studio system had led to the rise of pinku eiga, low-budget soft porn movies that were targeted at a male theatre-going audience. However, this transition towards films dominated by eroticism had already begun almost a decade earlier for auteur filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura. The director had continued […]

July 2, 2021 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. And with an abrupt rip, like a needle scratching on a record, Kazuya is suddenly spirited away to a medieval kingdom under attack by a demon lord. For reasons not entirely clear, this completely normal Japanese teenager has been selected as the hero who can save the kingdom, and now he is […]

June 29, 2021 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Tanya is twenty-five years old. She’s got half a decade of adventuring behind her, looting treasure from dungeons, spell-casting to protect her friends from goblins and ghouls. But, you know, twenty-five is kind of old, right? And Ryan, the leader of her party, has just told her that he expects she’ll be […]

June 23, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. The unprecedented success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba continues to perplex spectators, with the franchise’s film entry, Mugen Train, shattering records to become Japan’s highest-grossing film of all time. Much of the attention on the property is paid to the stunning animation and action-packed narrative. However, there is something to be said about the […]