Tag: Andrew Osmond

March 2, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Somali and the Forest Spirit is mostly soft and enchanting, the story of a little girl’s journey through a wondrous world, under the protection of her indefatigable non-human dad. And yet bits of the series are really tough. Anime often plays merry hell with Western expectations of animation and children’s media. The […]

February 4, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Like many fantasy protagonists, the young heroine of Ascendance of a Bookworm is on a desperate mission. But it doesn’t involve melting a ring, slaying a dragon, or facing an invading army. No, her mission is suggested by the title; it’s to read a book in a world where books are as […]

February 1, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Shirobako opens… misleadingly, actually. Its first minutes show an animation high-school club where five close-knit girls are making their own anime mini-epic. Once that’s been done, they promise each other, they’ll join up again to make something else. And then… the story skips forward two and a half years. Two of the […]

January 29, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The film Blue Giant opens in UK cinemas this Wednesday. It’s a music drama about the fortunes of three teen boys in Tokyo – sax player prodigy Dai, haughty pianist Yukinori, and greenhorn drummer Tamada – trying to make it as a jazz trio. You can read more about Blue Giant’s story […]

January 17, 2024 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The film’s title card reads, “Patlabor Movie 3.” The functional name is in line with the previous Patlabor films – and at least this one has an extra tag, “Wasted XIII” – but it’s the most misleading part of the movie. Released in 2001, eight years after Patlabor 2, Wasted XIII isn’t […]