Anime– category –

(Neo, Uncooked Media) The director Masaaki Yuasa has long been a hero to fans of maverick, free-spirited anime. He’s had a following since his first movie, the extraordinary fantasia Mind Game (2004), which has had one-off screenings ove...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) Grimgar does something unusual and impressive. It tells a fantasy adventure story that’s a small story of everyday, mundane, universal life and death. It’s about kids in a world of magic and monsters, one of the mos...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) How far is too far? It’s a question asked by the 2004 series Koi Kaze, but it equally apples to the series. Anime has pushed against acceptability for decades, often by linking sex and violence in shocking ways. Koi...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) This is the Tenchi that British fans are likeliest to have seen already, the 13-part video series from the early 1990s that looks better than most TV fare today. It began a sprawling franchise but remains highly acc...

(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media) Previously, we expressed amazement that Belladonna of Sadness, a 1970s erotic “art” animation, could get a British home release. Momotaro, Sacred Sailors is even further out there. It’s a black-and-white ki...

(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media - I also wrote an article about the production of the film for the AllTheAnime blog and another article that's reproduced below the review.) Picture a world different from ours in intricate, tiny details, ye...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also add further observations in an article on the AllTheAnime website.) Schoolgirl Hitomi is whisked to Gaea, where there be dragons, princesses, cat-girls and a war waged by an enemy fixated on fate. Protected ...

(This is my review of the first season for Neo magazine, Uncooked Media; my Neo review of the second season is below the first.) Aldnoah.Zero is set in an alternative present, after humans found a “Hyper Gate” on the moon left by aliens ...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) It’s sadly appropriate that a boy robot reject from a high-tech future world is the hero of a CGI cartoon that’s already flopped in America and Japan, the two countries he might call home. Astro Boy (Mighty Atom ...

My review of the first two Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System films is on the AlltheAnime website.

(Neo magazine, Uncooked Media) After Devilman Crybaby, Netflix’s next complete new anime series is the larkish, capering Kakegurui. It may feel very different from Crybaby but it prods those same guilty pleasure centres that got lots of ...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also have an article on the live-action Netflix version on the AlltheAnime site.) (Volume 1) If Stephen King scripted an anime, it might look like Erased, which Anime Limited is releasing in two six-part volumes....

My review of Mamoru Hosoda's film Mirai for Sight & Sound is available on the BFI website. [amazon_link asins='B07LD4P4BN,B07K8ZSKVT' template='ProductGrid' store='anime04c-21' marketplace='UK' link_id='bb3bb72c-4dd0-4ac8-97f0-260016...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) 1973 and Mushi Production, the studio that propelled postwar anime with Astro Boy, is bankrupt, collapsing and dying. Its founder Osamu Tezuka has jumped ship. Just before the end, the studio releases a movie… Bella...

My review of the film for Neo magazine (Uncooked Media) is below. I also wrote several online pieces related to the film; the links are at the bottom of the review.   In Japan, Your Name is the success story of the year. Makoto Shin...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also add further observations in an article on the AllTheAnime website.) How many anime fans are fans of animation – animation as a medium, whether it’s anime or not? There are some (just google “sakuga”), but pe...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) A parent choosing a cartoon film for his or her children may view Japanese titles with understandable suspicion. Although anime has a far family-friendlier reputation than it once did, anime films which look like...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) When Hosoda Mamoru’s The Boy and the Beast was released in Japan in summer 2015, it was at the commercial forefront of the country’s animation, even as Studio Ghibli went on hiatus. The film’s starting point – a ...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) There’s much primary material about Miyazaki Hayao in English, from behind-the-scenes documentaries on home releases of his films, to two large books of his writings (Starting Point and Turning Point). It’s impre...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) Naoko Yamada is in London, and not for the first time. The director who’s one of the most prominent women in anime swung by a few years ago, when she was prepping K-ON! The Movie, in which a band of perky girl music...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also wrote a review of the first live-action Parasyte film for the MangaUK website.) (Volume 1) Parasyte starts with its money shot. A middle-aged husband and wife face each other in a dimmed room; then the man’s...

(Neo magazine, Uncooked Media) If you know the history of comics, you’ll know Little Nemo. It was a legendary New York newspaper strip, published a hundred years ago, where a little boy has strange and scary dreams. Drawn by Winsor McCay...

(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media) We start with two feuding brothers in 1880s England. Then there are cursed masks, mystical fighting styles, vampires, zombies, undead knights, shipwrecks, Nazis, ancient superbeings, chariot races, family s...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) In recent decades, Hollywood has turned out a line of effects-led blockbusters, technically groundbreaking and artistically stunted in roughly equal measure. The 1999 film The Matrix, directed by Larry and Andy W...