Tag: Helen McCarthy

February 20, 2023 · 0 comments

“Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto has departed for the sea of stars.” That was how his daughter Makiko Matsumoto, who heads his office Studio Leijisha, announced Matsumoto’s death on 13th February of acute heart failure in a Tokyo hospital, at the age of 85.

January 22, 2023 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. Art is a time machine; it shows us other versions of history. The ones we like least are usually the ones we need to remember. George Takei, who made his name in Star Trek as the original Mr Sulu and went on to devote his life to activism, has been time travelling […]

December 4, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. From the first episodes of the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime series, director Kunihiko Ikuhara delivers a format packed with new ideas and a number of classic riffs. As a girl, we are told, Utena lost her parents, but remembers being comforted by a gallant prince on a white horse. The impressionable child […]

October 12, 2022 · 2 comments

By Helen McCarthy. I’ve seen a Catbus live onstage not twenty feet away. I’ve watched Totoro fly over the heads of a packed audience, all gasping, laughing, cheering and entirely caught up in childlike acceptance of magic. I’ve seen the conventionally invisible puppeteers and their rods and strings and wind machines and skill and grace […]

April 26, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. A book can be a ground-breaking work of scholarship and still accessible to any intelligent reader. Language capable of being understood by the average well-read media fan is also capable of carrying the most challenging ideas. So, I’m always delighted to read new work that takes its subject and its readers more […]