Tag: Japan

February 7, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Two years ago, this blog ran a spoiler-filled article discussing the end of Makoto Shinkai’s blockbuster Your Name. Now, after the cinema run of Shinkai’s follow-up Weathering with You, we give it the same treatment. The discussion will involve huge SPOILERS for both Weathering and Your Name, so consider yourself warned.

January 29, 2020 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. As is customary, the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, or Eiren, has just released figures for the previous year’s box office, presenting the opportunity to consider the current state of Japanese cinema as an industry, if not as an art. There is some cause for celebration on this first score, at […]

January 27, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Writing in NEO magazine, I described Kakegurui as a larkish, capering fight show, except that its bug-eyed duels are fought at tables with cards, gambling chips, raging egos and molten obsessions. Think Vegas on campus, with a cast of gambling-obsessed maniacs and a new girl, Yumeko, who looks like a lamb to […]

January 24, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. This blog has previously highlighted Japan’s love for mystery stories, and particularly for what the author P. D. James called the “amateur sleuth” tale, where the puzzle is tackled by a savant outside the police. Think of Holmes, Poirot, Marple or their descendants like Japan’s L or Sweden’s Lisbeth Salander. Haruchika is at […]

January 21, 2020 · 0 comments

Jo Shishido, who died yesterday in Tokyo, will be remembered as the charismatic moon-faced star of many a Nikkatsu Action film from the 1960s. He is best-known in the West for his iconic turn as the cold-hearted contract killer of Seijun Suzuki’s cult classic Branded to Kill (1967).