High school is a miserable time, when kids battle raging hormones, crushing insecurities and never-ending drama. In Kaito’s new manga Blue Flag (Ao no Flag), the students at Aohama High experience all the usual problems–plus some unusual ones. Alienated senior Taichi Ichinose has never forgiven himself for failing to prevent a cat from getting run […]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
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ANIME REVIEW: “Tokyo Godfathers”
June 17th, 2020 
Charles Solomon Shout Factory!/Gkids’ re-release of Tokyo Godfathers (2003) — with an English dub for the first time — serves as a reminder of the exceptional talent the art of animation lost when Satoshi Kon died in 2010 at the age of 46. Tokyo Godfathers was his third feature, after Perfect Blue (1998) and Millennium Actress (2002). […]
BOOK REVIEW: “Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli”
June 1st, 2020 Charles Solomon Although there have been numerous books and countless articles published about Studio Ghibli and its creations, few, if any, journalists have been able to write about the internal workings of the studio. Steve Alpert, who speaks Japanese fluently, came to Ghibli in 1996 and spent the next decade and a half there as a senior […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Promare”
May 21st, 2020 Charles Solomon At a time when many American features look so much alike, the brilliant colors and boldly stylized imagery in Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Promare hit the viewer like a bucket of ice water. As Imaishi, screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima and many of the animators worked together on the popular series Gurren Lagann, the flamboyant visual style won’t surprise […]
REVIEW: “Trolls World Tour”
April 11th, 2020 Martin Goodman I am continually amazed that recent animated films, even ones with five screenwriters (which Trolls World Tour has) continue to be so derivative, thematically redundant, and prone to replace originality with CGI eye candy. So far, in 2020, Pixar’s Onward has bucked this unfortunate trend. Now, Onward may not be a landmark film in that […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Mix Meisei Story, Part 1”
April 9th, 2020 Charles Solomon Baseball is enormously popular in Japan, and the Summer Koshien tournament that determines the national high school championship is one of the most anticipated sports events of the year. Nearly every Japanese schoolboy dreams of pitching in the Koshien. Dreams of the Koshien tournament haunt the shonen (boys’) sports series, Mix Meisei Story. In 1986, […]
REVIEW: Pixar’s “Onward”
March 11th, 2020 Martin Goodman Onward has the misfortune of being merely a very good film from a studio that produced the best animated films of the past two decades. This film has only a few flaws (more on that later) that are outweighed by its strengths. Still, in comparison with the best of Pixar I can only draw on […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Natsume Yujin-cho the Movie: Ephemeral Bond”
February 10th, 2020 Charles Solomon The 2018 feature Natsume Yujin-cho the Movie: Ephemeral Bond is based on a popular manga by Yuki Midorikawa that ran from 2005 to 2019. It’s also been adapted to a TV series that lasted six seasons and several CD dramatizations. Natsume Yujin-cho means “Natsume’s Book of Friends.” Takashi Natsume is a orphaned teen-ager who was […]
REVIEW: Blue Sky’s “Spies In Disguise”
December 30th, 2019 Martin Goodman If you have seen the trailer or commercials for Blue Sky Animation’s latest film, you know everything you need to know: A super-suave spy is turned into a pigeon by a nerdy kid who works for the same government agency. They team up to take down a bad guy and foil his nefarious plot. That’s […]
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 […]
REVIEW: “Frozen 2”
December 1st, 2019 Martin Goodman With Frozen II, Disney Animation has rebounded nicely from the ill-advised remake of The Lion King, proving once again that fresh ideas trump needless ones. Of course, Frozen II is a sequel, but it doesn’t feel like one. The original characters from Frozen star in the movie, but the screenplay by Jennifer Lee is a […]
REVIEW: Dreamworks “Abominable”
September 30th, 2019 Martin Goodman Abominable is a film certain to please middle school to younger age kids and those who love movies classified as “Family Friendly.” However, this approval is purchased at far too high a price. Adorable? Yes. Animated with technical virtuosity? Indeed. Formulaic and derivative? Unfortunately so. Abominable belongs in that category of movies that include “The […]
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 […]
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 […]
