Tag: Japan

August 16, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. So many things came to mind when I saw the title of Asumiko Nakamura’s Maiden Railways manga for the first time. And I thought, well, it’s probably a thing about girls who are trains, or trains who are girls, or a bunch of witches who moonlight as train conductors, but no. It’s […]

August 12, 2022 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. One of the carriages on the Kyoto shinkansen is a mauve hellscape of high-pitched voices and big eyes, devoted to the irritating but mercifully fictional anime mascot character Momonga. Every now and then the duelling assassins in David Leitch’s Bullet Train have to traverse it, subject to invasive entreaties to be someone’s […]

August 10, 2022 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Masakazu Ishiguro’s manga Heavenly Delusion begins with super double-bluff opening chapter, in which a bunch of gormless school-children, tutored by a robot, complain about an unexpected maths test. It’s only when one of them tries to come up with a word for it, unaware that the term “pop quiz” even exists already, […]

August 7, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Festooned with prizes, including the judges’ award at last year’s Scotland Loves Anime and the Japan Academy Award for Excellence in Animation, Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko now reaches British cinemas. As her name inadvertently suggests, Nikuko is a creature of fleshy delights – passionate, enthusiastic, bubbly and obsessed with foods. […]

August 1, 2022 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Megumi Hayashibara is an observant and empathetic narrator, walking the reader through her early years as a nobody struggling to finish nursing school while burning the night-oil on a bunch of freelance recording contracts as an anime voice actor. She is stereotypically Japanese about the need for apprenticeships and a pecking order, […]