Kenji Iwaisawa’s offbeat On-Gaku: Our Sound (2019) has attracted a loyal following in the US; it even earned an Annie nomination for Independent feature. Although it’s based on a self-published manga by Hiroyuki Ohashi, Iwaisawa wrote the screenplay, directed the film and animated it almost single-handedly. He simply couldn’t afford professional animators; the film’s shoestring […]

Many recent anime TV programs reflect Japan’s daunting socio-economic problems in the post-Bubble economy: An aging, shrinking population; a bleak financial future that makes many young people undesirable as potential marriage partners; growing economic inequality; the persistent trauma from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident Westerners call Fukushima—and the government’s ineffectual response to it.