Tag: Andrew Osmond

May 16, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Some pop-culture heroes only live twice. Others survive through endless reboots, re-imaginings and re-brandings, until they’re barely recognisable if you knew the originals. Japan’s Lupin the Third is different. He’s been in anime nearly fifty years, and yet you could show the new Lupin TV series, being released by Anime Limited, to […]

May 13, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Toshio Suzuki is the most famous producer in anime, and the third most important figure in Studio Ghibli’s history, behind only Miyazaki and Takahata. Now, with absolutely no fanfare, an English translation of Suzuki’s memoir Mixing Work With Pleasure has been published by the Japan Library imprint, translated by Roger Speares. At […]

May 4, 2018 · 1 comment

By Andrew Osmond. Two years ago, the British film magazine Little White Lies interviewed director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, then best known for directing Ghibli’s Arrietty and When Marnie was There. Yonebayashi was asked about the first Ghibli films he saw. Nausicaa and Totoro, he answered. “I’ve been watching all of them since I was a child… […]

April 6, 2018 · 0 comments

To many people, Isao Takahata will be remembered as the man who directed Grave of the Fireflies, the saddest Japanese animation ever made. Yet his work brims with the joy of life, from Heidi frolicking in the Alps with Peter in Takahata’s landmark 1974 series, to a gang of mischievous children calling “Li’l Bamboo!” to […]

February 21, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Whether he likes it or not, Hirokazu Koreeda has become the ambassador of contemporary live-action Japanese film in Britain. No other Japanese live-action director has his films released in British cinemas so regularly. Koreeda brings us portraits of ordinary, contemporary Japanese people, of different ages and genders, in dramas where the strongest […]