Tag: Japan

October 26, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The collection of anime called Pigtails and Other I.G Shorts encompasses anime going in bold new directions, as well as established directors – namely Masaaki Yuasa and Hiroyuki Imaishi – flaunting their signature styles.

October 23, 2020 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. The seaside town of Numazu has a “special” status in Japan. That’s supposed to mean that it has a quirkily autonomous mayoral council, but the tourist trade is keen to jump on the idea, and witters incessantly about how you can see Mount Fuji from the harbour, and how nobody makes noppo […]

October 20, 2020 · 0 comments

By Kambole Campbell. Reading the words ‘Penguin Highway’ together might feel like a hint towards a simplistic and joyous journey – after all, who doesn’t like penguins? It’s certainly the most straightforward title of any of Tomihiko Morimi’s novels – the most well-known are a little more illusive, namely The Tatami Galaxy, and The Night […]

October 17, 2020 · 0 comments

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 […]

October 14, 2020 · 0 comments

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 […]