October 20, 2020 · 0 comments

By Kambole Campbell. Reading the words ‘Penguin Highway’ together might feel like a hint towards a simplistic and joyous journey – after all, who doesn’t like penguins? It’s certainly the most straightforward title of any of Tomihiko Morimi’s novels – the most well-known are a little more illusive, namely The Tatami Galaxy, and The Night […]

October 17, 2020 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. In his new book Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West, Toru Mitsui repeatedly returns to the idea that multiple evolutions in Japanese tunes and songs have spurred directly from foreign influences. The examples he cites are from an impressively broad range of categories, spanning everything from leitmotifs, to subject […]

October 14, 2020 · 1 comment

The autumn (fall) anime season is officially underway and with that we’re excited to bring you the news we have licensed the latest series in the Love Love franchise, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club in the UK & Ireland! We’re also happy to confirm that the series is now streaming weekly through our […]

October 14, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Broadcast in 2012, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine presents a very different vision of Lupin III from the one that audiences were used to seeing capering around in anime, and not merely because it placed the serial’s femme fatale, Fujiko Mine, front and centre. Creator Kazuhiko Kato (Monkey Punch) cited many an […]

October 11, 2020 · 2 comments

By Jonathan Clements. The “Three Musketeers” are the toughest kids in Chiku High, although with a typically Japanese sense of rebellion, they still put on their uniforms in order to go in and bunk off. Quite possibly, nobody else knows how tough they are, since a planned rumble with the rival Marutake High is called […]

October 8, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. 2020 was supposed to be a year full of big anime movie releases. As we all know, Covid had other plans, and anime studios had to adjust as best they could. For example, one of the summer cinema releases was meant to be A Whisker Away, a delightful “girl turns into a […]