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

Anime

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 […]

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Anime

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 […]

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Anime

Eiichiro Oda’s pirate comedy-adventure One Piece may well be the most popular animated franchise on the planet. The 96 paperback collections of the original manga have sold more than 450 million books–not far behind the “Harry Potter” series. More than 939 episodes of the animated TV series have been produced with no end in sight. […]

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Anime

The outré sci-fi adventure-comedy RobiHachi (2019) presents the future as a tourist trap. Tall, lanky, and self-indulgent, Robby Yarge is a shameless if unsuccessful skirt-chaser and ne’er-do-well. After a series of get-rich-quick schemes crash and burn, he’s left owing a fortune to Mr. Yang. To collect the debt, Yang sends bright, eager Hatchi Ika. Hatchi […]

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Anime

Fire Force is set in a future Earth that was ravaged by The Great Disaster decades earlier, when much of the planet was rendered uninhabitable by terrible conflagrations. Many survivors took refuge in the Tokyo Empire. The Tokyo Emperors brought together personnel from the Holy Sol Temples, the Fire Defense Agency and armed forces to […]

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BOOK REVIEW: “The Art of The Boy and the Heron”

“The Art of The Boy and the Heron” opens with director Hayao Miyazaki’s self-deprecating Project Memo: “Isn’t it proof that you are aging when you imagine you’re still capable, but in fact you have memory loss due to senility? I would say yes.” Audiences who saw the Oscar-winning film would say “no.” The Japanese title […]