Gundam Thunderbolt
By Andrew Osmond. 
Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky may be the closest that anime has ever come to producing a full-blown Vietnam film. The Gundam franchise has always been about war, but Thunderbolt suggests its makers were marathoning films like Apocalypse Now and Born on the Fourth of July. Thunderbolt makes a “gritty” Hollywood franchise film like Rogue One look like, well, Star Wars. Continue Reading
Calamity of a Zombie Girl
By Andrew Osmond.
Calamity of a Zombie Girl is a horror film. If we’re being more precise, it’s a schlocky horror picture show, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise.
It’s a film in which college-age students investigate an occult mystery, uncover something they shouldn’t, and then start dying messily. There will be blood. Heads will be severed and splatted. Females will be inappropriately unattired. Cute animals will have a bad time. And none of the victim will think of doing the obvious things like getting away from here. Taken all together, it’s a time-honoured template, familiar to the kind of grizzled gore-hounds who’d watch a film like Bloodbath at the House of Death just for its name. Continue Reading
March Comes in Like a Lion
By Andrew Osmond.
March comes in like a lion resists obvious categorisation. You could call it a “slice of life” anime, but that’s a pretty useless heading these days; Wikipedia’s list of such anime covers everything from Azumanga Daioh to A Centaur’s Life via From Up on Poppy Hill.
Pinpointing March more, I’d say it’s on the dial between A Silent Voice, with its serious treatment of emotional pain, and Maison Ikkoku with its domestic warmth, though its comedy is toned down several notches from Ikkoku. It’s about an orphaned, withdrawn 17 year-old boy, Rei, living alone in present-day Tokyo, and his charming friendship with three sisters – one adult, one middle-schooler, and one boisterous infant – in the same neighbourhood. All these characters have suffered tragedy and loss, but the show highlights the continuation of their lives, their forging of new relationships. Continue Reading
Interview: Mamoru Hosoda
By Andrew Osmond.
In the run-up to the cinema release of Mamoru Hosoda’s eagerly awaited Mirai on 2nd November (subtitled) and 4th November 4 (dubbed), I interviewed Hosoda himself about his new film. Mirai revolves around the adventures of Kun, a four year-old boy in Japan, who magically encounters family members from the past and future.
Hosoda’s past acclaimed films include The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and Wolf Children, and we touch on these in the interview as well. Continue Reading
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 bomber’s capture is a massive 300,000,000 woolongs… and there are four humans and a dog that really need the money. Down on their luck as usual, the crew of the Bebop freighter get on the case.
Set in a universe that is partly inspired by 1970s blaxploitation, and partly inspired by Bruce Lee movies, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie takes place in a future solar system crisscrossed by teleporter freeways. Its look is deliberately designed to recall the pulpy quick-fixes of hack science fiction, with rockets stuck on big-rig trucks, and religious cults stuck in orbit to give them a sci-fi tweak. Continue Reading