Netflix announced today that beginning on February 1st, 21 films from Studio Ghibli, the Academy Award-winning Japanese art house, will be made available on the service globally (excluding US, Canada, Japan), through distribution partner Wild Bunch International, as part of the company’s continued efforts to grow its best-in-class library of animated films. For the first […]
Archive for the ‘Anime’ Category
REVIEW: “Dragon Ball: A Visual History”
December 3rd, 2019 
Charles Solomon Since its modest beginning as a serial in Weekly Shonen Jump 35 years ago, Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular properties in the world. It’s sold more than 250 million books, and has been animated for four TV series, twenty theatrical features, video games, etc. It’s also accounted for billions […]
TMS Entertainment Announce “MEGALOBOX 2” in Development
November 18th, 2019 Jerry Beck TMS Entertainment announced at Anime NYC that Megalobox 2 the highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s hit anime, Megalobox, is currently in development. Megalobox began as a project to commemorate the iconic manga series Tomorrow’s Joe. Highly lauded for its unique visual style and hip-hop inspired soundtrack, Megalobox followed the story of a mysterious boxer Joe […]
ANIME REVIEW: Netflix “Dino Girl Gauko”
November 18th, 2019 Charles Brubaker In today’s TV anime environment there seems to be less interest in producing anime for children than in the past. Most children’s anime airing today are decades-old properties that just happened to never leave airwaves, shows like Crayon Shin-Chan, Doraemon, and Chibi Maruko-chan for example. So I was intrigued when I heard about a new […]
Gutiérrez, Tartakovsky and Chung celebrate “Akira” Anniversary Screening at Academy
November 12th, 2019 Jerry Beck Based on the manga by director Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira (1988) is regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements in anime filmmaking to date. Proving the potential of animation to tell adult stories, Akira represents a cultural and technological landmark that continues to inspire modern animators. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is […]
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Tags: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo 
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INTERVIEW: Makoto Shinkai, Director, “Weathering With You”
November 5th, 2019 W.R. Miller It’s the summer of 2011. The long-range weather forecast for Tokyo is rain. And it’s not. Going to. Stop. Such is the sad state of affairs in Weathering With You, from Japanese director Makoto Shinkai. His previous work, Your Name, became the first anime not directed by Hayao Miyazaki to earn more than U.S. $100 […]
2019: A Sea Odyssey: An Interview with the Makers of “Children of the Sea”
October 31st, 2019 W.R. Miller As a young girl, Ruka Azumi had an amazing encounter with the sea life in her father’s aquarium, as they gathered and looked at her through the sea window. Years later, as a 14-year-old junior high student, she crosses paths with two boys, brothers, who are able to breathe and talk underwater, both raised by […]
INTERVIEW: Ji Zhau, Co-Director of “The White Snake”
October 28th, 2019 W.R. Miller Five hundred years ago in China, during the late Tang dynasty, the Dark General made people catch snakes that somehow energize him with supernatural power. The snake people—demons—don’t like this. So a beautiful young woman, Blanca, tries to assassinate him. She fails. Despite her martial arts prowess, she is subdued. She wakes in a remote […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Yu Yu Hakusho Ghost Files”
September 29th, 2019 Charles Solomon Like Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 14-year-old Yusuke Urameshi (Justin Cook), the hero of the brawling fantasy-adventure Yu Yu Hakusho (1992), is “a low-down cheap little punk.” He boasts that he’s the toughest kid in Sarayashki Junior High. He cuts classes and loves duking it out with other guys, especially with his red-haired […]
TRAILER: Fuminori Kizaki’s “Human Lost”
September 17th, 2019 Jerry Beck From the chief director of Psycho-Pass, the director of Afro Samurai, and the studio that brought you Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters comes the animated feature film Human Lost – Osamu Dazai’s masterpiece of Japanese literature re-imagined into a hyper-kinetic deep dive into human consciousness. Funimation Films will give Human Lost a limited theatrical release, […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Golden Kamuy: Season One”
September 10th, 2019 Charles Solomon 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 […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Cells at Work!”
September 4th, 2019 Charles Solomon 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 […]
GKids to Open “Promare” and “Another Day Of Life” in September
August 22nd, 2019 Jerry Beck Lest you thought GKids was sitting out Awards Season… They have two big pictures opening in September for Academy Award consideration. Raúl De La Fuente & Damian Nenow’s Another Day of Life will bow September 13th in both New York and Los Angeles. A week later, on September 20th, the distributor will open Studio Trigger’s […]
ANIME REVIEW: Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Part 2
August 8th, 2019 Charles Solomon 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 […]
Charles Solomon on Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” – 20 Years Later
July 17th, 2019 Charles Solomon 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 […]
