All Posts: Page 54
December 19, 2021 · 0 comments
Sayaka Kanda (1986-2021)
The actress Sayaka Kanda, who died yesterday, will be remembered as a media hyphenate – on stage and screen, and a voice performer not only for animated characters, but for their songs. She was, in fact, even more than that – a lyricist under several pseudonyms, and a producer for her own record label. Throughout […]
December 18, 2021 · 0 comments
Books: Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower
By Jeannette Ng. It’s hard not to compare Culinary Adventures of the Court Flower by Miri Mikawa with The Apothecary Diaries, as both are heavily inspired by imperial China and more specifically set within an imperial harem. But the two don’t simply have very different heroines; the approach to the translation and the frame are […]
December 17, 2021 · 0 comments
Hiroshi Hirata (1937-2021)
The manga artist Hiroshi Hirata, who died last week, spent his formative years struggling to make ends meet in a poverty-stricken Japan. He was born in Tokyo, where his parents were preachers for the Tenrikyo Buddhist sect, but was evacuated to the order’s heartland, Tenri, in Nara to avoid Allied air raids. He drew his […]
December 16, 2021 · 0 comments
Books: Anime’s Identity
By Jonathan Clements. Stevie Suan’s new book, Anime’s Identity, cannot resist telling a story from the production of King’s Avatar (above), a 2019 Chinese animated series that subcontracted some of its animation work to a studio in Japan, only to send back the materials on the grounds that the Japanese work was not of high […]
December 13, 2021 · 1 comment
Seraph of the End
By Andrew Osmond This time it’s vampires. In recent years, we’ve seen civilisation ended umpteen times over, often by zombie apocalypses, but now the bloodsuckers get a turn. It makes a difference. Zombies and Titans may tear you up and eat you, but at least they don’t laugh sadistically and tell you how much they’re […]
December 12, 2021 · 0 comments
Books: Approaches to Eva
By Jonathan Clements. Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion is a delightful collection of fresh scholarship on all sorts of intriguing aspects of anime, as revealed through various angles to a famous and much-loved series, itself given a new lease of life and a new legion of fans thanks to Netflix. Published by […]