Tag: Jonathan Clements

February 26, 2023 · 2 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Producer Toshio Suzuki was entertainingly underwhelmed when he was approached by agents for the pop stars Chage and Aska, who asked if Studio Ghibli would do the video for their new single “On Your Mark.” Fact is, he said, he’d never heard of them. Later versions of the story have tried to […]

February 15, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. When we first see Akira, he is gripped in the jaws of a mutant dog. Nahuse’s Rebuild World ditches the tiresome induction scene of many a “light novel“ – there is no sob-story about someone from our world magically transported elsewhere. Instead, we have an author who seems confident in his own […]

January 16, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. There’s something not quite right about Natsume Shiranui. Sometimes he stands too close to people. Sometimes he doesn’t quite read the room right. He’s troubled by social anxieties, doesn’t seem to have got a lot of the memos that many of us take for granted about what is and isn’t socially acceptable […]

January 4, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. In his lively new book Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Daniel Dockery talks us through the original plans in Japan for a game called Capsule Monsters, subsequently renamed and refashioned when it proved impossible to trademark. Along the way, he has time out for asides about […]

December 28, 2022 · 0 comments

Yuji Nunokawa, who died on Christmas Day, was not a well-known name among Anglophone anime fans, but he was  a powerful figure in the Japanese cartoon business, instrumental in many of its international successes. Born in Sakata City, Yamagata, into a family of tailors, his initial career direction was in graphic design – even later […]