Japan 433
Books: Gaijin at Ghibli
By Motoko Tamamuro. There are plenty of books written about Studio Ghibli, although it is difficult to tell how well they sell. Hayao Miyazaki’s collected writings seem to do well enough for Viz Media, but producer Toshio Suzuki’s memoirs only limped out from a small, expensive academic press. Perhaps these diminishing returns explain why Stephen […]
Sword Art On… Netflix
By Hugh David. In a possible near future, humanity has achieved the ability to upload human consciousness into VR environments. Within those environments, however, all sorts of scenarios, good and bad, can play out, sometimes at risk to the body left in the real world. On hearing this description, where a certain generation of anime […]
Interview: Mateusz Urbanowicz
By Andrew Osmond. If you’ve wondered about the artists who created the incredible backgrounds for Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, then meet Mateusz Urbanowicz. The Polish-born artist painted more than 120 backgrounds for Shinkai’s blockbuster (examples). He also contributed almost a hundred others to The Case of Hana and Alice (examples) and worked on an episode […]
Animerama
[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.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
by Jeremy Clarke. Portrait of the artist at age 66. A new documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda finds musician Ryuichi Sakamoto working on a new album following a third degree throat cancer diagnosis and time off work for treatment. At the same time, it presents a select chronological appraisal of his career from Yellow Magic Orchestra […]