Japan 492
Books: Archiving Anime
By Jonathan Clements. Archiving Movements: Short Essays on Materials of Anime and Visual Media, edited by Minori Ishida and Kim Joon Yang, is related to a patchwork of international initiatives – an anime archiving project at Niigata University, an exhibition in Singapore, and a brief mini-conference in Stockholm. It seems to have been produced as […]
Tokyo Ghoul
By Andrew Osmond. Good news, young man; your beautiful girlfriend wants to have you for dinner. It’s an old joke (especially for fans of cannibal superstar Hannibal Lecter) but it’s a fair summary of how Tokyo Ghoul opens. It’s set in what seems to be present-day Tokyo, with a big difference; the city is infested […]
Interview: Studio Trigger
By Andrew Osmond. Studio Trigger’s romping spectacle Promare had its British premiere at Scotland Loves Anime, and three of the film’s key staff were on hand to present it. Hiroyuki Imaishi is Promare’s director; he’s been a hero to fandom since he helmed Gainax’s mecha series Gurren Lagann back in 2007, before going on to […]
Cowboy Bebop
By Andrew Osmond. Cowboy Bebop turns 21 this year. For those who’ve never seen it, the 26-part series chronicles the misadventures of a cluster of spacefaring bounty hunters, in a future that’s lurid, farcical and tragic by turns. It’s somewhere between Blade Runner, Futurama and Kill Bill (predating the last two). It has an iconic […]
Books: Japanese Cinema Since 2000
By Jonathan Clements. Mark Schilling’s Art, Cult and Commerce: Japanese Cinema Since 2000 collates much of his writing from the last two decades, preserving it against future internet brown-outs and pay-wall enclosures. Conveniently going to print at the beginning of the Reiwa era, it is able to bring closure to the Heisei era that preceded […]