
In almost any boys’ sports anime, the short and/or red-haired guy is the eager firebrand: Hinata in Haikyu (volleyball), Nagisa in Free (swimming), Gion in All Out! (rugby). He never doubts that he and his teammates will win the big game, the tournament or the nationals. Hinomaru Ushio, the star of Hinomaru Sumo (2018), embodies […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]