Japan 466
Gundam Wing
By Andrew Osmond. Gundam is one of the biggest anime franchises, and the most confusing – tracking the dozens of individual titles can be harder than learning the Periodic Table. Gundam Wing, however, stands out for two reasons. One is that fans know it as “the Gundam with the cute boys,” which I’ll get to […]
Inuyashiki
By Roxy Simons. Ichiro Inuyashiki has it tough; he has no friends, he’s shamed publicly at work on a regular basis, and even his family despise him. His only source of solace is a stray dog named Hanako, but, despite how the world treats him, this middle-aged loser still wants to be a good person. So, […]
Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High
By Roxy Simons. Teiichi (Masaki Suda) wants to create his own empire. How’s that possible? By controlling the student council of Kaitei Supreme High School, of course. If he could run the school then Teiichi would become a shoe-in for a prestigious government position, and from there he could even become Prime Minister. With his father’s […]
Takahata: The Exhibition
By Andrew Osmond. The magnificent exhibition “Takahata Isao: A Legend in Japanese Animation” (the title puts Takahata’s family name first, Japanese style) runs at Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art until 6th October. Struggling to take in Takahata’s career of over 50 years, I was reminded of an immodest quip made by Orson Welles in […]
Books: Japanese Media Cultures
By Jonathan Clements. Originally appearing as two issues of the online journal Arts, Japanese Media Cultures in Japan and Abroad: Transnational Consumption of Manga, Anime and Media-Mixes, edited by Manuel Hernández-Pérez, makes a brave stab at defining a number of important baseline issues in the study of anime and manga. It does contain several tooth-itchingly […]