Based on a best-selling Chinese children’s book, Tibetan Dog (2011) was produced at Japan’s Madhouse studio in a rare Chinese-Japanese deal. Since his parents separated, Tenzin (Tatsuomi Hamada) has grown up in the city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province with his mother. He learned to play the flute from her and had an unremarkable urban […]
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ANIME REVIEW: “Tsuki-Ga Kire: The Complete Series”
June 12th, 2018 
Charles Solomon In the first episode of the 2017 broadcast series Tsuki-ga kirei (in Japanese Tsuki-ga kirei means “As the moon, so beautiful”), Kotaro Azumi (Stephen Sanders), a 9th grader at Kawagoe City Daisan Junior High, quotes Osamu Dazai: “How excruciating, arduous and unbearable it is to live.” Kotaro adds, “He must have been talking about middle […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Kiss Him, Not Me: The Complete Series”
March 19th, 2018 Charles Solomon Like Ouran High School Host Club (2006), the teen romcom Kiss Him, Not Me (2016), plays off the distaff equivalent of the harem comedy. Based on the award-winning 2013 manga by Junko, the Japanese title Watashi ga Motete Dōsunda literally means “What’s the Point of Me Getting Popular?” High school junior Kae Serinuma (voice by […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge”
March 15th, 2018 Charles Solomon Phantom Rouge, the second “Hunter x Hunter” movie, debuted at number one in Japan in 2013. It opened on 257 screens, earning ¥456,779,000: about US $5,143,930 then, an impressive sum for an opening weekend there. The title is pronounced “Hunter Hunter” Yoshihiro Togashi, who created the original manga in 1998, said he came up with […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Yamada-kun and the 7 Witches”
March 4th, 2018 Charles Solomon A featherweight supernatural romantic farce, Yamada-kun and the 7 Witches (2015) turns the conventions of the popular anime genre of the harem comedy topsy-turvy. The original manga by Miki Yoshikawa, which sold almost four million copies, has been made into a live action series, as well as an animated one. Students at Suzaku High dismiss […]
ANIME REVIEW: “All Out!! Part 1”
February 24th, 2018 Charles Solomon In sports anime, the shortest guy on the team is usually the most enthusiastic— aspiring volleyball star Hinata in Haikyu and champion swimmer Nagisa in Free are so excited about competing, they don’t worry about their size. Kenji Gion (voice by Stephen Sanders), the hero of the broadcast series All Out!! (2016), hates being short. […]
ANIME REVIEW: “The Morose Mononokean”
January 27th, 2018 Charles Solomon We don’t really have a word in English that corresponds to the Japanese yokai. They aren’t ghosts as we think of them; nor do they correspond to Western demons or ogres. Their appearance is often monstrous, but they’re not all huge or ugly. Yokai can be grotesque, hideous, funny-looking or even attractive. There doesn’t seem […]
Less Is More: The Simple Beauty of “Dam Keeper Poems”, “The Big Bad Fox”, and “The Yamadas”
January 8th, 2018 Charles Solomon We live in an era of visual overload. Animation studios are producing images so detailed, they’re virtually indistinguishable from live action, but why do they want to? How does rendering every leaf in the background make a story more compelling? What does an audience gain by seeing each stitch in a cartoon character’s sweater? Why […]
ANIME REVIEW: Takahata’s “My Neighbors the Yamadas”
January 4th, 2018 Charles Solomon Although it’s technically a feature, Isao Takahata’s droll My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999), which is receiving its first release on Blu-ray, plays like a collection of comic sketches. It’s based on Hisaichi Ishii’s “Nono-chan,” a popular manga that may remind Americans of “Hi and Lois” or “Baby Blues.” Blandly middle income and middle class, Takashi […]
BOOK REVIEW: 20 Years of “Zits”
December 22nd, 2017 Charles Solomon Twenty years ago–July 7,1997–a lanky blond teenager slouched down to breakfast; his father and mother bid him good morning (“Did you sleep well, Sweetie?”). His reaction: “As usual, my parents were on my case.” Comics readers discovered “Zits,” written by Jerry Scott and drawn by Jim Borgman, a genuinely funny new strip that combined the […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Ranma ½: OVA & Movies Collection”
December 7th, 2017 Charles Solomon Rumiko Takahashi’s gender-bending martial arts comedy Ranma ½ debuted as a manga in “Shonen Sunday Comics” in 1988 and in animation soon after. Three decades later, it remains hugely popular in both Japan and the United States. Although Takahashi has said she wasn’t commenting on gender roles in Japan, its absurd premise suggests otherwise. Wiry, […]
ANIME REVIEW: “ReLIFE: Season One”
November 11th, 2017 Charles Solomon At 27, Arata Kaizaki (voice by Micah Solusod), the central character of the school comedy ReLIFE (2016), is a NEET: An acronym that stands for Not in Education, Employment or Training. The term is generally applied to young men who are seen as not contributing to the Japanese economy—or much of anything else. Although he […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Orange: The Complete Series”
November 5th, 2017 Charles Solomon Based on the shojo (girl’s) manga by Ichigo Takano, the broadcast series Orange (2016) mixes questions about the possibility of time travel changing the past with high school heartache and angst. Naho Takamiya (Jill Harris) is a somewhat timid but otherwise normal 16-year-old student at Azalea Hill Public High School in the mountainous region of […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Rasengan Collection”
November 2nd, 2017 Charles Solomon With more than 220 million books of the manga in print—about half the total of the “Harry Potter” series, sales of tens of millions of DVD and Blu-ray discs, as well as countless consumer products, Naruto has become a global phenomenon. In Japanese folklore, some evil spirits grow multiple tails as they age and their […]
Charles Solomon’s Animation Year End Review 2017
Although he wrote them in 1859, Charles Dickens might have been thinking of animation in 2017 when he penned the celebrated lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the […]