Japan 595
Books: Popular Music in Japan
By Jonathan Clements. In his new book Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West, Toru Mitsui repeatedly returns to the idea that multiple evolutions in Japanese tunes and songs have spurred directly from foreign influences. The examples he cites are from an impressively broad range of categories, spanning everything from leitmotifs, to subject […]
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine
By Andrew Osmond. Broadcast in 2012, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine presents a very different vision of Lupin III from the one that audiences were used to seeing capering around in anime, and not merely because it placed the serial’s femme fatale, Fujiko Mine, front and centre. Creator Kazuhiko Kato (Monkey Punch) cited many an […]
On-Gaku: Our Sound
By Jonathan Clements. The “Three Musketeers” are the toughest kids in Chiku High, although with a typically Japanese sense of rebellion, they still put on their uniforms in order to go in and bunk off. Quite possibly, nobody else knows how tough they are, since a planned rumble with the rival Marutake High is called […]
2021 Works in Progress
By Andrew Osmond. 2020 was supposed to be a year full of big anime movie releases. As we all know, Covid had other plans, and anime studios had to adjust as best they could. For example, one of the summer cinema releases was meant to be A Whisker Away, a delightful “girl turns into a […]
Lupin III the First
By Jonathan Clements. Master-criminal Lupin III is in for a surprise at a Paris heist, when his attempt to steal a priceless diary is thwarted by another thief. But Laetitia Lambert is no career burglar like Lupin and his crew – she’s a would-be archaeologist, tasked with stealing the book by her grandfather. Inevitably, Lupin […]