The 2019 broadcast series How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (Danberu Nan-Kiro Moteru?, literally “How Many Kilograms of Dumbbell Can You Lift?”) could have been animated with ultra body-conscious Southern California in mind. Koyo Women’s Academy student Hibiki Sakura (Madeleine Morris) loves to eat. As she walks home with her friend Ayaka, she consumes […]

High school seniors Kaito Yashio (Clifford Chapin) and Akiho Senomiya (Lindsay Seidel), the heroes of the offbeat sci-fi adventure Robotics;Notes, are the last remaining members of the Robot Research Club. But Kaito’s only interest is the video game Kill-Ballad: He’s ranked as the number five player in the world. He reluctantly helps his childhood friend, […]

Japanese production company Science SARU INC. and its partner Asmik Ace, Inc., Japanese production, distribution and sales company, announced that GKIDS has acquired the North American distribution rights for the animated feature Inu-Oh, the latest feature from acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa (Ride Your Wave, Keep Your Hands Off Of Eizokuen!). Presented as a work in […]

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). […]

As every otaku knows, choosing your club is a key decision in Japanese high school life, and the kid who’s the only member of a beloved but obscure club is a standard anime character. Schools eliminate clubs with fewer than five members, so recruiting more kids is vital, whether it’s for the Classical Literature Club […]

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 […]