Tag: Andrew Osmond

December 9, 2021 · 3 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Boogiepop Phantom is a teenage Twilight Zone. Contrary to popular anime depictions, being an adolescent in Japan isn’t all comedic love triangles, eccentric school clubs and wild beach vacations. It can be numbing, depressing, achingly lonely and aridly meaningless. In the deepest funk of teenage night, where everything seems weird and alien, […]

December 5, 2021 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The paradox of Masaaki Yuasa’s series Kaiba is that for much of the time, it’s a sad story, and yet there’s something joyous about it. What lies behind that joy would be expressed succinctly in a more recent Yuasa anime. At the start of his 2020 series Keep Your Hands of Eizouken!, […]

December 3, 2021 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Cardcaptor Sakura shows how the biggest, most wonderful adventure can start from the smallest of things. In the show’s first episode, Sakura Kinomoto, a happy, lively grade school girl, returns from school to find she’s the first home. She hears a funny rustling sound coming from her dad’s basement study. Worried it […]

November 30, 2021 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Animated characters are made out of ink or pixels, not flesh and blood, but that doesn’t mean the audience can’t feel their pain. There’s a moment in Perfect Blue where a character bellyflops on a shard of glass that still makes me wince. So does a scene in The Girl Who Leapt […]

November 30, 2021 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Inuyasha is an adventure; it’s both an action show and a romcom, and it’s one of the most successful anime to cross male and female demographics. It’s also a monster show, bursting with slimy beasties and dark sorcerers, though its main characters are a heroically unflappable schoolgirl and a peppery boy with […]