Tag: Jonathan Clements

December 8, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Look out! You’ve just been whisked to a far-off planet peopled by exotic beauties, where magic really works and alien invaders threaten paradise. Now’s your chance to right wrongs, fight mighty battles and smite your enemies before winning the hand of a beautiful princess. So what’s the catch? Well, some bright spark […]

November 21, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Despite the title, which immediately and perhaps unjustly evokes Jasper Sharp’s magisterial Behind the Pink Curtain, Norman England’s Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan’s Biggest Film Sets is not an exhaustive account of an entire genre. Instead, it is a very personal snapshot of one man’s interaction with the Japanese […]

November 8, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Those silly do-gooders in Akihabara, making a computer game company take down a mere advertising billboard on the grounds it might offend, shock or otherwise discombobulate passing members of the public. Then again, since the billboard was advertising a game called More! Knock ‘Em Up! Blazing Boobs Super Erotic App School, I […]

October 26, 2021 · 0 comments

When asked by an interviewer why he became a manga creator, the late Sanpei Shirato answered bluntly: “I needed to eat.” This seemingly simple reply encapsulated much of his own gritty, materialist attitude towards storytelling. He was always aware of the big picture, of the great weight of history as it marched along, but focussed […]

October 24, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. And then a pile of books fell on top of her, and she was dead. That can’t possibly be the beginning of a tale, can it? But Miya Kazuki’s fantasy series Ascendance of a Bookworm wastes little time describing the humdrum, Earthbound life of its heroine, Urano, before it kills her off […]