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. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Anime’
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ANIME REVIEW: “RobiHachi”
April 30th, 2020 
Charles Solomon 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 […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Fire Force”
April 21st, 2020 Charles Solomon 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 […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Mix Meisei Story, Part 1”
April 9th, 2020 Charles Solomon Baseball is enormously popular in Japan, and the Summer Koshien tournament that determines the national high school championship is one of the most anticipated sports events of the year. Nearly every Japanese schoolboy dreams of pitching in the Koshien. Dreams of the Koshien tournament haunt the shonen (boys’) sports series, Mix Meisei Story. In 1986, […]
Anime To Binge While Sheltering in Place
March 30th, 2020 Charles Solomon To help fill the enforced hours at home of “sheltering in place,” here are some anime series that lend themselves to binge watching. Some are older, some recent; adventures, comedies, romances. Typically, the adventures take the main characters on quests where they face much realer danger than American counterparts. The comedies have a take-no-prisoners silliness […]
From Power Ranger to Power Villain; Johnny Yong Bosch performs Nine on “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising”
February 27th, 2020 W.R. Miller Johnny Yong Bosch may be more widely known as the second Black Power Ranger, Adam Park, from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but since then, his career has exploded in the realm of voiceover acting with over 360 credits. His most notable roles include Vash the Stampede from Trigun (his first anime character); Renton Thurston in […]
INTERVIEW: The Cast of “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising” Discuss Their “Quirky” Roles
February 24th, 2020 W.R. Miller Imagine a parallel Earth where 80% of the population possess superhuman abilities, or “quirks.” Some become heroes. Others, villains. Then there are those without powers who desire to become heroes. That’s the case with high school student Izuku Midoriya. Luckily for him, he befriends a mentor, All Might, who happens to be the world’s greatest […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Natsume Yujin-cho the Movie: Ephemeral Bond”
February 10th, 2020 Charles Solomon The 2018 feature Natsume Yujin-cho the Movie: Ephemeral Bond is based on a popular manga by Yuki Midorikawa that ran from 2005 to 2019. It’s also been adapted to a TV series that lasted six seasons and several CD dramatizations. Natsume Yujin-cho means “Natsume’s Book of Friends.” Takashi Natsume is a orphaned teen-ager who was […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Hinomaru Sumo”
January 20th, 2020 Charles Solomon 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 […]
Studio Ghibli Films to Stream on Netflix outside US and Japan
January 20th, 2020 Jerry Beck 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 […]
ANIME REVIEW: Netflix “Dino Girl Gauko”
November 18th, 2019 Charles Brubaker 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 […]
INTERVIEW: Makoto Shinkai, Director, “Weathering With You”
November 5th, 2019 W.R. Miller 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 […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Yu Yu Hakusho Ghost Files”
September 29th, 2019 Charles Solomon 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 […]
TRAILER: Fuminori Kizaki’s “Human Lost”
September 17th, 2019 Jerry Beck From the chief director of Psycho-Pass, the director of Afro Samurai, and the studio that brought you Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters comes the animated feature film Human Lost – Osamu Dazai’s masterpiece of Japanese literature re-imagined into a hyper-kinetic deep dive into human consciousness. Funimation Films will give Human Lost a limited theatrical release, […]
ANIME REVIEW: “Golden Kamuy: Season One”
September 10th, 2019 Charles Solomon Alternately ground-breaking, engaging and grisly, Golden Kamuy (2018) can be challenging to watch, but it’s difficult to ignore. Based on the 2014 manga by Satoru Noda, the story takes place near the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912). While serving in the 1st Division of the Imperial Army during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Saichi Sugimoto […]
