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

In sports anime, the shortest guy on the team is usually the most enthusiastic— aspiring volleyball star Hinata in Haikyu and champion swimmer Nagisa in Free are so excited about competing, they don’t worry about their size. Kenji Gion (voice by Stephen Sanders), the hero of the broadcast series All Out!! (2016), hates being short. […]

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Anime

We don’t really have a word in English that corresponds to the Japanese yokai. They aren’t ghosts as we think of them; nor do they correspond to Western demons or ogres. Their appearance is often monstrous, but they’re not all huge or ugly. Yokai can be grotesque, hideous, funny-looking or even attractive. There doesn’t seem […]

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Independent

We live in an era of visual overload. Animation studios are producing images so detailed, they’re virtually indistinguishable from live action, but why do they want to? How does rendering every leaf in the background make a story more compelling? What does an audience gain by seeing each stitch in a cartoon character’s sweater? Why […]

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Anime

Although it’s technically a feature, Isao Takahata’s droll My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999), which is receiving its first release on Blu-ray, plays like a collection of comic sketches. It’s based on Hisaichi Ishii’s “Nono-chan,” a popular manga that may remind Americans of “Hi and Lois” or “Baby Blues.” Blandly middle income and middle class, Takashi […]

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Twenty years ago–July 7,1997–a lanky blond teenager slouched down to breakfast; his father and mother bid him good morning (“Did you sleep well, Sweetie?”). His reaction: “As usual, my parents were on my case.” Comics readers discovered “Zits,” written by Jerry Scott and drawn by Jim Borgman, a genuinely funny new strip that combined the […]

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