Tag: reviews

July 3, 2016 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Although the title of Sean Macdonald’s new book is Animation in China: history, aesthetics, media, it keeps largely to an account of the group of animators and facilities that formed the nucleus of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1957. He has plainly realised that a little coverage of the pre-war Wan […]

April 24, 2016 · 0 comments

By Raz Greenberg. Following up on Andrew Osmond’s list of scholarly books on anime, the list in this post is meant to provide readers with a starting point for books about manga. On the understanding that manga does not exist in a vacuum, and that it’s also a part of the larger world of international […]

April 12, 2016 · 0 comments

Andrew Osmond on the true story of the Shimabara Rebellion. Christ’s Samurai by Jonathan Clements tells two stories, one enfolded within the other. The broader story is that of Christianity in Japan, beginning with the first missionaries to the country in the sixteenth century, their early success in winning converts (especially on the southern Japanese […]

February 2, 2016 · 0 comments

Raz Greenberg examines Harmony and Genocidal Organ Japanese science fiction novelist Satoshi Ito, better known by his professional name Project Itoh, had a tragically short career. He published his acclaimed debut novel, Genocidal Organ, in 2007, followed by a novelization of the fourth Metal Gear Solid video game in 2008 and another original title, the […]

November 10, 2015 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. In her book Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, the author Susan Napier recounts a strange story. In 1993, a Japanese critic called Toshiya Ueno visited the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia, during its ghastly four-year siege by the Serbians. Wandering through the bomb-blasted buildings, Ueno came across a wall on which […]