By Jonathan Clements. Stevie Suan’s new book, Anime’s Identity, cannot resist telling a story from the production of King’s Avatar (above), a 2019 Chinese animated series that subcontracted some of its animation work to a studio in Japan, only to send back the materials on the grounds that the Japanese work was not of high […]
Dec 16, 2021 • Subscribe
More like this
Books: Anime’s Knowledge Cultures
By Jonathan Clements. The subtitle of Jinying Li’s new book, “Geek, Otaku, Zhai” alludes to the rise of fandom and fans as movers and shakers in modern media…
The Blogger Identity
No post summary was provided.
Anime’s Ugly Ducklings
Over the years many people have noted how contrived some anime can be at times. When the prettiest girl in school meets the handsomest boy in school (or…
Anime’s aspect ratios
Aspect ratios go unremarked, but few things can be more fundamental to an anime than its shape. To my knowledge, few things have been said on the topic.…
Anime’s Pro Shoppers!
Black Friday sales have come and gone, the chaotic crowds swarming the entrances to big box stores, small boutiques, and shopping malls have thinned to more reasonable gaggles…
Trials of Identity: Calamity
This film was part of the 2021 virtual New York International Children’s Film Festival. Calamity is a 2020 French-Danish animated film that tells the fictionalized childhood story of…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books: Ghibliotheque
By Andrew Osmond. The Ghibliotheque podcast started in 2018, and soon became an institution. It offered a journey through the films of Studio Ghibli, presented by Michael Leader…
Books: Sexiled
By Shelley Pallis. Tanya is twenty-five years old. She’s got half a decade of adventuring behind her, looting treasure from dungeons, spell-casting to protect her friends from goblins…
Books: Orienting
By Jonathan Clements. “My stay here has been so short,” said Rabindranath Tagore to Japanese students in 1916, “that one may think I have not earned my right…
Anime’s history is brief
Someone who worked on Astro Boy (1963) directed an anime film which came out this year. The whole mass-broadcast history of anime lies within living memory. More, it…
Anime’s Adorable Time Warp!
It’s true of almost every anime fan out there, that they want to see their favorite anime characters as children. Whether it’s framed as the epic beginning of…
Anime’s New Great Detective
The first arc of The Apothecary Diaries begins and ends with a mystery that relatively few people in modern Japan have to reckon with: why would a baby…
Anime’s Many Monster Monikers!
In the Japanese language, there are sooooo many words to describe “monsters”. The variety of terms and the subtle connotations of the words, all so people could talk…
Anime’s Traditional wooden sandals!
Geta are Japanese wooden sandals that have been around for about a thousand years and are still worn today. A hallmark of geta are the telltale “Clop Clop”…
Considering Anime’s Moe Trend
Moe designs dominate anime nowadays. The designs focus on cute girls with overly large eyes–even by anime standards–rounded faces, and pastel colors in hair and clothing. I’ve def…
Yasuke: Culture, Tradition and Identity
I binged the entirety of the 6 episode Netflix Original Anime Series Yasuke yesterday from famed Director LeSean Thomas (Legend of Korra, Canon Busters, The Boondocks). I went…
Secret Identity, by Alex Segura
Carmen Valdez eats and breathes comic books; ink flows through her veins. She’s moved away from her beloved Miami and her family to the rough streets of 1975…
Anime’s Action Packed Battle Boredom!
Warning: The following post may seem a bit ranty to some readers. If you are a lover of shonen anime, tournament arcs, or battle anime reader discretion is…
Anime’s Bad Story Telling Habits
Anime has problems with its story telling habits. Habits we as fans often take for granted. It’s just how anime is, we say when we notice these problems.…
ANIME’S GREATEST CHARACTERS – RENGE INUI
“I would seriously of given Renge either a different voice or give her a permanent mouth gag” “out of all the characters Renge is my least favorite “…
My top anime’s for 2021
We managed to get here, the year is done and all of the anime for 2021 is out and Im sure all of you have had your favourites…
Anime’s Feast for the Eyes!
It’s no deep dark secret that there are some anime out there that are absolutely gorgeous to look at. Anime such as Violet Evergarden, A Silent Voice, and…
Anime’s Curious Counsel of Consorts
They say that amongst the royal concubines and consort of the inner palace, there is one particular maid that is wise and clever beyond her years. This young…
Books: Tatami Galaxy
By Tom Wilmot. Any mention of The Tatami Galaxy usually brings to mind Masaaki Yuasa’s much-loved 2010 anime. The charming series has become something of a modern classic,…
Books: Otherside Picnic
By Shelley Pallis. Sorawo Kamikoshi is a loner, a twenty-year-old nerd studying cultural anthropology at a Saitama university, whose hobby is exploring spooky places. Nor are these randomly…
Books: Studio Ghibli
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…
Books: Reading Murakami
By Jonathan Clements. Almost everything that is written about fiction is either reception (what the reader thought of the book) or production (an occasional making-of about the author…
Books: Spirit Chronicles
By Shelley Pallis. Yuri Kitayama’s Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles has several different beginnings, and to be frank, I am not sure that it has stopped beginning yet, even…
Books: Terminal Boredom
By Jonathan Clements. “There is something wrong with our present society,” Izumi Suzuki once wrote, “and I can’t stand SF written by people who don’t understand that… Even…
Books: Hayao Miyazaki
By Andrew Osmond. Hayao Miyazaki, published to tie in with the current exhibition about the director at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, is a whopping big book.…
Books: Leiji Matsumoto
By Jonathan Clements. For all the passion and excitement that the contributors bring to the new collection Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Anime and Manga Legend, their subject…
Books: Tearmoon Empire
By Jonathan Clements. Then she woke up, and it was all a dream. Or was it? The teenage princess Mia Luna Tearmoon vividly recalls being eight years older,…
The Best Books
Buying books, especially old books, is a fascination and my biggest weakness. I love the old wear and tear on antiques, and sitting and pondering where the scraped…
Books: Hell Mode
By Shelley Pallis. Kenichi is a gamer suffering from that common modern malaise, a frustration with games that make life too easy for him. He’s just spent three…
Books: Japanese Cinema
By Jasper Sharp. There are many paths one might take through the vast and varied terrain of Japanese cinema. Peter Cowie’s addition to the ever-expanding range of publications…
Books: Monster Kids
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…
Books: Rediscovered Classics
By Zoe Crombie. Anime has taken inspiration from Western cultures throughout much of its history, from Astro Boy’s Disney-inspired aesthetics to the gorgeous European locales of films like…
Books: Rebuild World
By Jonathan Clements. When we first see Akira, he is gripped in the jaws of a mutant dog. Nafuse’s Rebuild World ditches the tiresome induction scene of many…
Books: Kyoto Stories
By Jonathan Clements. “Riding on public transportation in Japan makes you feel a part of the general population,” writes Steve Alpert in Kyoto Stories. “One of the people.…
Books: Combat Baker…
By Jeannette Ng. The light novel series The Combat Baker and the Automaton Waitress follows Lud “Silver Wolf” Langart, a former captain and mech-operator who retires after a…
Books: Infinite Dendrogram
By Shelley Pallis. Infinite Dendrogram is the best game ever invented, a “virtual reality massively multiplayer online game” but not a crap one like all the ones that…
Books: Japanese Drinking
By Shelley Pallis. Masaaki Watanabe’s anime series Bartender is part of a long tradition of TV shows about smart loners who help others in secret. Its leading man…
You’ll Never Guess My Secret Identity
Because I am going to tell you. I am now watching three of the four TV Asahi Sunday morning kids shows on a weekly basis, Kamen Rider Wizard,…
Hourou Musuko: An Exploration of Identity
Hourou Musuko is an anime from early 2011. It was released by AIC and based off of a manga by Shimura Takako. Who I know from her work…
Chrollo Lucifer: The Meaning of Identity
Chrollo Lucifer is the most mysterious character in Hunter x Hunter and an absolute joy to watch on screen. His charming nature paired with his confusing motives make…
Multiverse Monarch Face Reveal, & Real Identity
From singer to VTuber: Meet Monarch, the stunning Queen of the Multiverse, and see her face-revealing photos!
Blue Period – In Search of Identity
I was really looking forward to the Blue Period anime after having read the manga. Here's how it held up!
Square Enix Manga & Books Reveals New Books Coming Spring 2023
The good folks from Square Enix Manga & Books have sent us their upcoming release slate for spring 2023. Headlining their releases is the Ch...