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I don’t read much manga. To some fans (and a few of my readers, surely), this will probably be seen as a deficiency. After all, a lot of anime is birthed in the illustrated pages of manga artists, and not just a few people prefer the original written works to their animated counterparts. In my [...]
As I write this review, I’m listening to Led Zeppelin. Love or despise the band, there’s no question that their albums captured the raw, unbridled passion of rock music. Fifty years from now, rock enthusiasts will have forgotten many pop idols, but they will still study what made Zeppelin fly. That same passion for the [...]
It’s become rare to review something that has virtually fallen off the face of the earth, but this title seems to be a mystery to all but the most knowledgeable fans…I only found it mentioned on an old Web list compiling the basic essentials on various shoujo titles. It’s not surprising that it’s disappeared, especially [...]
Until just recently, there were three must-see anime anthology films: the delectable treatise on all things android Robot Carnival, the bizarrely futuristic Manie Manie, and the brilliant Memories from the mind of Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. Now there are four. With the release of The Matrix Reloaded, audiences have gotten a second helping of the [...]
By all accounts, the short form OVA is dead. There have been a few direct-to-video shows recently, such as Munto and Macross Zero, but what they’ve had in animation has been lacking in their scripts. But thankfully, there’s one OVA in the last five years popular enough to make a sequel…Animation Runner Kuromi. A …
Considering that the animation industry contributes a nice chunk to the Japanese economy and produces around 50% of the programming seen on Japanese television, it’s surprising that there aren’t more stories about the industry itself. Hollywood has produced a number of “insider” stories and satires like The Player, Sunset Boulevard, and Bowfinger for over 70 [...]
Mamoru Oshii has become a hot commodity as of late, with his noted work on such popular features as Jin-Roh, Ghost in the Shell, and the Patlabor movies. With his slow, methodical style that intrigues as it unfolds, Oshii has proven over and over again his ability to keep an audience involved despite pacing that [...]
I have a mixed history with the anime based on stories by the collective known as CLAMP. For those not in the know, CLAMP is a group of four women who have created some of the most popular manga titles in Japan. Most of their work has been introduced into the animated medium with widely [...]
I’m getting sick of Pinocchio. The core story still holds merit, of course; the journey from being something false to something true, from toy to boy or machine to man, holds all sorts of theological and metaphysical implications. But the tale’s so over-told, at this point, that it’s better not to tell it at all [...]
It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So what is it called when you work to illustrate somebody’s novels, only to rip off the core characters and plot of one of them and pass it off as your own? One could say that of Yoshitaka Amano, the man credited as the [...]