Tag: Japan

November 27, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jeannette Ng. Much as the Motion Picture Academy loves films about film-making and writers love nothing more than a protagonist who is also a writer, manga about making manga has become its own little subgenre. There is an art to balancing the indulgent navel-gazing and insider-jokes with the bluntly realist looks behind the proverbial […]

November 24, 2021 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. In Penguindrum, a dorky penguin hat – that’s a hat that looks like a penguin, not one made out of penguins – brings a beautiful girl back to life. This miracle starts an adventure that’s insanely odd even by the standards of anime. The girl is Himari Takakura, the angelic sister of […]

November 21, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Despite the title, which immediately and perhaps unjustly evokes Jasper Sharp’s magisterial Behind the Pink Curtain, Norman England’s Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan’s Biggest Film Sets is not an exhaustive account of an entire genre. Instead, it is a very personal snapshot of one man’s interaction with the Japanese […]

November 11, 2021 · 1 comment

By Andrew Osmond. Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon spends its first moments fooling you into thinking that it’ll be a gritty military drama. There’s a flashforward to a terrible battle. There are ruined city buildings, a wounded youth in a school uniform facing death, and a little witch-girl intoning “Congratulations” with flat menace. And […]

November 8, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Those silly do-gooders in Akihabara, making a computer game company take down a mere advertising billboard on the grounds it might offend, shock or otherwise discombobulate passing members of the public. Then again, since the billboard was advertising a game called More! Knock ‘Em Up! Blazing Boobs Super Erotic App School, I […]