Japan 466
Twin Star Exorcists 2
By Shelley Pallis. Grotesque monsters known as Impurities reside in Magano, a realm parallel to the present day. Exorcists purify these evil apparitions to protect the people. Rokuro Enmadou is opposed to becoming an exorcist, even though he has the talent to be one, but an oracle gives him the title of “Twin Star Exorcist,” […]
Books: African Samurai
By Jonathan Clements. The temple is on fire. The warlord Nobunaga makes his last stand against the henchmen of a traitorous underling. Hearing someone kicking open a side-door, three attacking samurai rush in to execute an escapee, only to face a terrifying, ash-smeared demon. “In person they had never seen before a shadow so tall, […]
Blue Spring
by Jeremy Clarke. Teenage high school movie Blue Spring (2001) centres on the leader of a violent boys’ gang in their final year at school. The nonchalant Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) has befriended Aoki (Hirofumi Arai in his debut role) since the latter first joined his class in their infancy: these days Aoki is Kujo’s number […]
Makoto Ogino (1959-2019)
Makoto Ogino, who died of renal failure on 29th April, spent his whole life preoccupied with the wheel of karma. On the day of his very first sale, his father, an education officer responsible for censuring unsuitable books, pleaded with him not to become the sort of manga creator whose works would get denounced in […]
Books: Penguin Highway
By Jonathan Clements. “When I was in third grade, I spent September and October researching square things.” It is a typical statement from Aoyama, the super-serious pre-teen narrator of Tomihiko Morimi’s Penguin Highway. It is a comment of simple truth, but hints at statistical obsessions, an eidetic memory, and an inadvertent hint of recursive SF, […]