I had my arms and heart open. I wanted to unashamedly love this film, smother it in chocolate valentine hearts, and set my keyboard aflame in effusive praise until I wore out my supply of similes. I wanted to compare it to some of the most outstanding achievements produced under Disney/Pixar’s aegis. What I saw […]

In 2017, Writer Riichiro Inagaki and illustrator Boichi scored a hit with their adventure-comedy manga Dr. Stone in “Weekly Shonen Jump.” Both a popular and critical success, Dr. Stone went on to win a Shogakukan Manga Award in 2019. (Viz has published 15 volumes of Dr. Stone in English.) For the 2019 animated adaptation, director […]

The hit broadcast series Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (2015) blends elements of two popular anime genres, the fantasy adventure and the harem comedy, into an appealing mix. Long ago, the gods who dwelled above the city of Orario descended, looking for entertainment: They limited their powers and began interacting […]

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 […]

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). […]

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 […]