All Posts: Page 7
January 14, 2024 · 0 comments
Patlabor 2
By Andrew Osmond. The first Patlabor film is an excellent cerebral thriller. Patlabor 2 The Movie, though, is an artistic statement. Thirty years old, it’s still the anime that feels the most like live-action. It’s only tangentially a mecha film, with the title Patlabors on screen for a fraction of the running time. This is […]
January 10, 2024 · 0 comments
Great Pretender
By Andrew Osmond. Great Pretender is a crime-caper series, not unlike Lupin III, but less cartoon-zany. This is a hardboiled show, with sex, drugs and real-world grit; it has bold, unreal colours without feeling lurid; and its character designs are by Evangelion legend Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Jan 10, 2024Jonathan Clements
January 7, 2024 · 0 comments
Manga: Alpi the Soul Sender
By Shelley Pallis. Alpi is a wandering exorcist (or “Soul Sender”), although she is not very good at it. She has only taken on the dangerous job in an attempt to track down her missing parents, who disappeared some years earlier. But much of the appeal in “Rona’s” manga comes from the quirky way this […]
January 4, 2024 · 0 comments
Parasyte ~ the maxim
By Andrew Osmond. Parasyte starts with its money shot. A husband and wife face each other in a dimmed room; then the man’s head splits and unfolds into a Venus fly-trap, with rows of teeth and a half-dozen eyes on stalks. The woman can’t scream, only gasp in halting, terrified breaths, before the thing chomps […]
January 1, 2024 · 3 comments
Anime Streaming Guide 2024
By Andrew Osmond. Unlike 2022, which saw big upheavals in anime streaming, things have been relatively stable for the last year. Crunchyroll remains the most prominent anime platform for British viewers, with other new titles available from Netflix, Disney+, HIDIVE, Amazon Prime but, sadly not ITVX. So let’s get to it… Jan 1, 2024Jonathan Clements
December 28, 2023 · 0 comments
Manga: Poetry of Ran
By Shelley Pallis. Ran is a “Child of Impurity”, a warrior with the power to exorcise monsters, but only by taking on their curses himself. As a result, he is a toxic figure, shunned by the villagers he defends, doomed to a short life-span when the accumulated poisons eventually overwhelm him. And he has acquired […]