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

Commentary

Although he wrote them in 1859, Charles Dickens might have been thinking of animation in 2017 when he penned the celebrated lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the […]

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Anime

Rumiko Takahashi’s gender-bending martial arts comedy Ranma ½ debuted as a manga in “Shonen Sunday Comics” in 1988 and in animation soon after. Three decades later, it remains hugely popular in both Japan and the United States. Although Takahashi has said she wasn’t commenting on gender roles in Japan, its absurd premise suggests otherwise. Wiry, […]

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Anime

At 27, Arata Kaizaki (voice by Micah Solusod), the central character of the school comedy ReLIFE (2016), is a NEET: An acronym that stands for Not in Education, Employment or Training. The term is generally applied to young men who are seen as not contributing to the Japanese economy—or much of anything else. Although he […]

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Anime

Based on the shojo (girl’s) manga by Ichigo Takano, the broadcast series Orange (2016) mixes questions about the possibility of time travel changing the past with high school heartache and angst. Naho Takamiya (Jill Harris) is a somewhat timid but otherwise normal 16-year-old student at Azalea Hill Public High School in the mountainous region of […]

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Anime

With more than 220 million books of the manga in print—about half the total of the “Harry Potter” series, sales of tens of millions of DVD and Blu-ray discs, as well as countless consumer products, Naruto has become a global phenomenon. In Japanese folklore, some evil spirits grow multiple tails as they age and their […]

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