[WARNING: Content potentially Not Safe For Work] By Jasper Sharp. The three titles in Mushi Pro’s short-lived “Animerama” series, A Thousand & One Nights (1969), Cleopatra (1970) and Belladonna of Sadness (1973), arrived at an interesting juncture in the history of Japanese animation and Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Production.
By Helen McCarthy. Belladonna of Sadness, the last film from Osamu Tezuka’s groundbreaking studio Mushi Pro, crashed and burned soon after the studio itself. It failed at the Japanese box office, and made little impression on the world outside Japan. French film journal Les Cahiers du Cinema recently hailed it as “the hidden treasure of […]
By Jasper Sharp. Who would have thought that one of the talking-point animated releases of the year would be an obscure title made in Japan over 40 years ago? Hailed as “One of the great lost masterpieces of Japanese animation”, Belladonna of Sadness (also known as Tragedy of Belladonna) was originally released in 1973 as […]
Isao Tomita, who died on 5th May, was not just a composer, but also a performer and a pioneer in electronic music. Born in what is now Suginami ward in Tokyo, he spent much of his childhood in China, where his father Kiyoshi was a physician at the Kanebo textile mill in Qingdao. It was […]