Tag: Jonathan Clements

September 9, 2018 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons will prove to be a vital core text in understanding the history of anime and manga fandom. This is not merely for its incisive analysis of the transformations of the word otaku over the last thirty years, but also for its detailed […]

May 7, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Mari Okada’s memoir of two decades in the anime business begins and ends with the disastrous premiere screening of Anthem of the Heart in her hometown of Chichibu – a huge event in the middle of nowhere, inconvenient for all attendees, with a film that stops playing halfway. As the screenwriter, she […]

March 30, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. In The Anime Boom in the United States, Michal Daliot-Bul and Nissim Otmazgin summarise several key issues in modern anime, including an overview of its entrepreneurs, the long-term influence of Japanese governmental cultural policies, and the effects of anime stylistics on contemporary American cartoons. They promise a “top-down” perspective on the business […]

March 25, 2018 · 2 comments

By Jonathan Clements. I’d been sceptical for a long time, but I didn’t step out of the shadows until about ten years ago. I hesitated for a long while because I was sure I had to be missing something. Surely that many people could not all be fooled by the same fake news…? But by […]

February 2, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Staking a claim for Japanese animation as one of the world’s “richest and most interesting artistic forms”, Maria Roberta Novielli’s Floating Worlds: A Short History of Japanese Animation briskly chronicles the last hundred years of the medium, from its first, scrappy screenings in 1917, through its uses in wartime propaganda, post-war artistic […]