Charles Solomon

Editor

Internationally known animation historian and critic, Charles Solomon has written over 15 books books including Enchanted Drawings: The History Of Animation, The Art of Disney’s Frozen, The Making of Peanuts Animation, and Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Disney Beauty and the Beast .

Articles By Charles Solomon

Anime

Alternately ground-breaking, engaging and grisly, Golden Kamuy (2018) can be challenging to watch, but it’s difficult to ignore. Based on the 2014 manga by Satoru Noda, the story takes place near the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912). While serving in the 1st Division of the Imperial Army during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Saichi Sugimoto […]

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Anime

Both upbeat and offbeat, Cells at Work! (2018) is a quirky fantasy series that may initially remind some viewers of Osmosis Jones (2001). But the program is lower key and much less hip: It feels closer to the old police drama “The Naked City”: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has […]

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Anime

Cardcaptor Sakura (1996) probably ranks as the best and best-loved work by the four-woman artists’ collective, Clamp. A textbook magical girl adventure, the animated series debuted in 1998 and ran for 70 episodes, followed by two features and an OVA. A rather timid 4th grader who lived with her older brother Toya and their widowed […]

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Anime

Twenty years ago, I met Hayao Miyazaki for the first time. Princess Mononoke was his first film to receive a major US release, and my editors at the LA Times let me do a profile of him. We met at a hotel in West Hollywood; we sat at a garden table where he was free […]

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Anime

In America, animation is rarely used for action or adventure films. Because it’s still largely regarded as children’s entertainment here, studios are usually reluctant to tell stories where the danger is real and the hero can be killed. In contrast, Masahiro Ando’s Sword of the Stranger (2007) is an action-filled samurai adventure that echoes the […]

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