another anime movie review

By Tom Wilmot. There’s a bomb on the Hikari 109! Tetsuo Okita (Ken Takakura) and his band of jaded blue-collar bombers attempt to extort money from the government, holding the lives of some 1,500 bullet train passengers to ransom. When the National Railway suggests stopping the train to check for an explosive, they learn that […] http://dlvr.it/Spy49S

By Andrew Osmond. The name Summer Ghost may sound oxymoronic to British viewers. We tend to associate ghosts with cold, dark months, as with A Christmas Carol and the BBC’s tradition of putting up scary spook stories over Christmas. Actually, Summer Ghost isn’t a frightening film as such, though it deals with fears, intense emotions […] http://dlvr.it/SpnRcg

By Andrew Osmond. Princess Jellyfish is an unusual name, which fits a most unusual anime. This eleven-part series is a sitcom that might turn into a romcom, in which the two main characters are a painfully shy girl with a passion for jellyfish, and a stunning princess who happens to be a boy (and the […] http://dlvr.it/Spdl0q

By Jonathan Clements. “The history of manga,” notes the back-cover blurb for Matthieu Pinon and Laurent Lefebvre’s new book, “is inextricably tied to Japan’s social, economic, political, and cultural evolution.” But the authors neglect to mention the real selling point, which is that their History of Modern Manga actually bothers to point out where those […] http://dlvr.it/SpSR83

It’s been a long time since we last attended MCM London Comic Con (October 2019, no less – can you believe it?), and to say we’ve missed you has been an understatement. But now the time has come for us to return, and we’re beyond excited to officially confirm that we’ll be attending London Comic […] http://dlvr.it/SpJdM5

By Andrew Osmond. For all fans of Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, we’d like to remind you that Miyazaki’s first anime, the adventure series Future Boy Conan, is available from Anime Limited in standard and Collector’s formats, the latter in 4K. If you want to know what Conan is like (quick answer; like Laputa), there’s an […] http://dlvr.it/Sp9299

By Jonathan Clements. The sub-versus-dub debate was first truly ignited in August 1960, when Bosley Crowther in the New York Times issued a broadside against having to read a film. “It is foolish,” he wrote, “to hobble expression with an old device that was mainly contrived as a convenience to save the cost of dubbing […] http://dlvr.it/Sp0h1j

by Jeremy Clarke. Chie Hayakawa‘s dystopian drama Plan 75 examines some of the social fallout of a government policy whereby Japanese people can voluntarily have themselves terminated after age 75. Sedate classical piano music plays on the soundtrack. The out of focus image could be looking down a corridor. After a long wait, a man […] http://dlvr.it/SnrxdW

By Jonathan Clements. “I’m sure lots of us are struggling right now. But even so, let’s unite our efforts and give it our best shot!” These words are put into the mouth of one of the minor characters of Shinya Kawatsura’s The House of the Lost on the Cape but resonate through the years, from […] http://dlvr.it/SnhCbP

By Andrew Osmond. In the film The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit to Goodbye, a modern Japanese boy and girl are caught up in a new version of one of Japan’s oldest stories. It’s a kind of time travel story; it also asks what you’d willingly give up for your heart’s desire. It’s told in […] http://dlvr.it/SnYN38

By Andrew Osmond. The comedy-space series The Irresponsible Captain Tylor has a puzzle at its core, one that’s summed up very well by a 1970s Doctor Who story. In that serial, two characters are discussing the infuriating title hero. Played by a long-scarfed Tom Baker, he’s crazy and shambolic, yet has a weird knack for […] http://dlvr.it/SnNWCc

It’s May the 1st, and you know what that means? It’s time for us to Morris dance for you announce our latest round of Early Bird pre-orders! It’s another exciting month ahead, culminating in our return to MCM London Comic Con (more on that soon!), but for now let’s focus on what’s coming to our […] http://dlvr.it/SnMbWY