Tag: Jonathan Clements

March 26, 2024 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Lina is rushed to the infirmary at the edge of life, her body terribly battered and sliced by an encounter with a lethal dragon, surrounded by wizards chanting healing spells and administering stasis commands. It is only as she slowly recovers, her memories of the battle mercifully lost, that her carers start […]

March 18, 2024 · 1 comment

The artist Mutsumi Inomata, who died on 10th March, has been a ubiquitous presence in the anime world for the last forty years, even though she distanced herself from actual animation in the late 1980s. When interviewed about her character designs on Weathering Continent in 1993, she admitted that she already had left much of […]

March 9, 2024 · 0 comments

“Tarako” Isono, who died on 4th March, would often contend against the media’s assessment of her. Repeatedly in interviews, she would assert that she identified as a “singer-songwriter”, in spite of constant descriptions of her as a “voice actress”. But her career as a performer and lyricist, while manifold and long-running, was destined to be […]

March 8, 2024 · 0 comments

The manga creator Akira Toriyama, who died on 1st March, was cited by the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump as being the prime catalyst in driving the magazine to its six-million circulation in the 1980s. The antic humour of his Doctor Slump (1980-84) and the sprawling, brawling sci-fi saga Dragon Ball (original series 1984-95) made […]

February 28, 2024 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. The subtitle of Jinying Li’s new book, “Geek, Otaku, Zhai” alludes to the rise of fandom and fans as movers and shakers in modern media and culture, tracking the Rise of the Nerds from a period, say, when only “losers” read comics in the eyes of the mainstream, to an age where […]