Anime, Japanese animation, has long been popular internationally. Anime series such as Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon gained popularity in North America after being broadcast on Cartoon Network’s Toonami lineup in the early 2000s. Hayao Miyazaki’s feature length animated films have set global box office records, topped only by the recent Demon Slayer the Movie: …
HBO Max boasts an impressive catalog of Studio Ghibli films. The Japanese animation house is most closely associated with director Hayao Miyazaki, who has helmed classics for Ghibli like the anime staple Spirited Away. Thanks to Miyazaki’s aesthetic, “Ghibli” is an international shorthand for bucolic settings, themes of environmentalism, and coming-of-age tales infused with magic and …
Being swept away from the mundane real world to a fantastical, magical kingdom is a common trope in speculative fiction. In fact, it is a subgenre called ‘portal fantasy’. In Frank L. Baum’s Oz mythos, and the classic film derived from it, The Wizard of Oz, a tornado famously sweeps protagonist Dorothy Gale from her humble Kansas home …
March 2022 marks 25 years of Cartoon Network’s action animation block, Toonami. Toonami was instrumental in popularizing anime to Western audiences, broadcasting popular titles that became seminal in the development of “otaku” culture outside of Japan. The Beginning In its first inception, beginning in 1997, the Toonami block, like a lot of basic cable programming …
Anime and music are inextricably linked. In Japan “anisongs”- anime theme songs – are a genre unto themselves; a broad one spanning rock, pop and categories in between. Artists regularly score chart-topping hits with themes to animated films and tv series such as LiSA’s smash “Gurenge” for the anime juggernaut Demon Slayer: Kumetsu No Yaiba. …
The Associated Press reported on February 22 that a graphic novel by master Japanese animation auteur will be published in the U.S. for the first time—nearly forty years after its initial release in Japan. Titled Shuna’s Journey, the Mizayaki graphic novel is Miyazaki’s adaptation of a Tibetan folk tale about a prince who travels to a …
Miyazaki Graphic Novel to Be Published in the US Read More »
Its full title is rather clunky: Demon Slayer-Kimetsu No Yaiba-the Movie: Mugen Train. Called Demon Slayer: Mugen Train for short, despite not having as evocative and sentimental a title as the artful works of Studio Ghibli the anime tie- in film unseated Miyazaki’s Spirited Away as the highest grossing box office film in Japan’s history. …
In late 2021, Japanese animated filmmaker Makoto Shinkai announced his upcoming Suzume No Tojimari. In English, “Suzume Locking Up the Doors” is slated to be released in Japan in Fall 2022. The doors that the title alludes to are magical doors appearing spontaneously throughout the world, which the heroine, Suzume, must close, with the aid of …
My Hero Academia should be more than just an anime about a superhero high school. It should be more than just about the superb supernatural abilities (known as ‘quirks’) or the fantastic fight scenes. Anime commentaries usually cover character abilities, strength comparisons, and power-scaling. However, they seldom touch on the emotional and social lessons they teach …
