Books 114
Books: Anime Fan Communities
Andrew Osmond on a study of transcultural flows and frictions Animation travels. It’s good at it, often better than live-action. Animation is amenable to dubbing and localising, and its foreign origins often go unnoticed, at least by child viewers. Perfect Blue director Satoshi Kon put it simply. When he was growing up in Hokkaido, “I […]
Books: China Goes Global
By Jonathan Clements. At the turn of the 21st century, Lotus Lantern was the great hope of the Chinese animation industry, a lavish, big-budget musical conceived in blatant imitation of a Disney blockbuster. Needless to say, it was written off in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis as “a mess from start to finish,” although Chinese TV media […]
Project Itoh: Books in Review
Raz Greenberg examines Harmony and Genocidal Organ Japanese science fiction novelist Satoshi Ito, better known by his professional name Project Itoh, had a tragically short career. He published his acclaimed debut novel, Genocidal Organ, in 2007, followed by a novelization of the fourth Metal Gear Solid video game in 2008 and another original title, the […]
Books: Manga in America
Jonathan Clements on the bistromathics of manga. Casey Brienza’s Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics reveals an ultra-modern publishing industry, exploiting the bleeding edge of digital ingestion and yet staffed by scattered freelance peons, some of whom literally sift through dumpsters for their dinner. Or is it, perhaps, a […]
Crouching Tiger II: Sword of Destiny
By Jonathan Clements. Jiaolong, (Zhang Ziyi’s character from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has suffered since the events of the movie. Her new-born son is stolen from her and substituted for a baby girl, and she ends up as a wealthy sword-for-hire in the desert city of Dunhuang, guarding Silk Road caravans and raising her adopted […]