Category: Anime

TMS Entertainment: One Of The Most Important Anime Studios

Published May 11, 2023

I’ve been looking at the history of a variety of anime studios such as Toei Animation, Sunrise, Studio 4°C etc. but I’ve only briefly mentioned one of the most important, TMS Entertainment. Considering their body of work, their history and impact, I thought it worthwhile to take a look at TMS Entertainment, what anime/animation they’ve contributed to and to explain why they’re noteworthy even among anime studios.

Starting with a look at the history of the company, TMS Entertainment (Tokyo Movie Shinsha) first began producing animated works in 1964 under the name Tokyo Movie. Their first anime series was an adaptation of an Osamu Tezuka manga called Big X and they soon followed this up with some shows such as Obake no Q-Tarō, Star of the Giants and the 1969 Moomin series. However, a particularly notable series of theirs began airing in 1971 and was simply called Lupin III. While originally a failure that ended up getting cancelled, reruns of the series proved popular and, in 1977, the incredibly popular Lupin III Part 2 began airing, proving to be a big success that has developed into a long-running franchise of TV series, films, OVAs, TV specials etc. that continue to this day.

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What Are Espers And Their Prevalence In Japanese Media

Published May 8, 2023

When exploring Japanese media such as anime, manga and video games, you’re quite likely to come across a term that is infrequently used in the West, “Esper”. It’s a word that is actually quite easy to understand but, due to our lack of familiarity with the term, many can still be quite confused. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what espers are and their prevalence in Japanese media.

Let’s start with what an esper is. An esper refers to someone who has ESP (Extrasensory Perception), hence the first three letters in the word esper. ESP refers to any ability to obtain information outside of the five senses with examples including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition etc. Note that the term only refers to the ability to receive information, not the ability to affect the world around such as telekinesis, levitation, astral projection etc. However, as we are going to see, espers in Japanese media are not restricted by this and are often depicted as being capable of exerting force using their psychic abilities.

Tetsuo from Akira is one of the more notable espers in Japanese media.

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What Are Toei Animation’s World Masterpiece Fairy Tales Films?

Published May 1, 2023

Toei Animation has a long and rich history that I recently devoted an article to but, because of their vast catalogue, I’m always learning about new things that they produced. My recent discovery is a film series that Toei Animation released between 1977 and 1982 called “World Masterpiece Fairy Tales” (not to be confused with World Masterpiece Theater which was released by Nippon Animation). I found them interesting enough that I thought we’d take a look at what Toei Animation’s World Masterpiece Fairy Tales films are.

Each film has “世界名作童話”, which is read as Sekai Meisaku Douwa and means World Masterpiece Fairy Tales, written before the title. The first film was released in 1977 and was called “The Wild Swans”. It adapts “The Six Swans” by the Brothers Grimm and “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Anderson and follows a girl called Elisa whose six brothers are turned into swans by their step-mother. In order to break the curse, she must refrain from talking or smiling for six years as she sews shirts of nettle cloth to save her brothers. The film was released in a variety of countries and was dubbed into English, Arabic, Greek etc. but the most interesting story comes from its Italian release. Heidi, Girl of the Alps had become a big hit in Italy and, due to a similarity in character design between Elisa and Heidi, The Wild Swans was renamed “Heidi Becomes A Princess” and reedited to have a vague connection to the TV series.

The poster for the 1977 anime film “The Wild Swans”.

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The Interesting Trope Of Banchō and Sukeban

Published April 27, 2023

As I was watching Ultraman Taro, a tokusatsu series, the other day, there were a couple of episodes where some children were being bullied by their seniors and something that stood out to me was their clothing. Large heavy jackets that were black in colour with a tinge of blue, a peaked cap and quite a few metal accessories. I explained to those present that this outfit indicated that they were juvenile delinquents and that I’d seen them in a variety of Japanese media. Realising that I’d never talked about it before, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the interesting trope of Banchō and Sukeban.

Let’s begin by looking at what the words “Banchō” and “Sukeban” mean. Banchō, written as 番長 in Japanese, originally referred to a governmental position that involved controlling troops near towns and was repurposed to describe the gangs and leaders of juvenile delinquent males around the mid-20th century. As these gangs refused to admit female members, sukeban, written as スケバン in Japanese, were established which were female juvenile delinquent gangs.

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What Exactly Is The Subgenre Of Mecha Called Super Robot?

Published April 17, 2023

When it comes to genres within the medium of anime, easily one of the most famous has to be “Mecha” where characters go into battle in giant mechanical suits. However, it’s interesting to note that this genre is, itself, typically divided into two subgenres, “Real Robot” and “Super Robot”. While Real Robot is probably the best-known at this point, due in part to the massively successful Gundam franchise, Super Robot actually has a longer history and so I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what exactly this subgenre of mecha is.

We should first start off by explaining the difference between Real Robot and Super Robot. Real Robot refers to a subgenre of mecha where the mechanical suits are treated in a comparatively realistic manner such as having these suits be mass-produced, requiring maintenance and repair, running out of ammo and fuel etc. In contrast, Super Robot tends to have the mechs be produced uniquely, perhaps being a prototype developed by a military or a being developed by an ancient civilisation, that are operated simply and are able to move in a manner that almost feels life-like.

Tetsujin-28, also known as Gigantor, was the first mecha anime.

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A Harmless Bit Of Self-Promotion

Published April 13, 2023

I started this blog near the end of 2019 and have been consistently releasing two blog posts per week ever since. I recently surpassed 365 blog posts which means that, if you felt so, you could read a post a day for over a year at this point (give it a shot with the newly added Random Post button that is in the widget)! While I’ve been promoting my other work via the blog in subtle ways over the years, I’ve never written a full article dedicated to it. Therefore, I thought that I’ve earned the right to do a harmless bit of self-promotion and taking a look at some of the other places you can find me.

I’ve mentioned my main YouTube channel in the past and think it logical to start there. The channel itself is called “Immortallium” which I’ve since adopted as my online persona and it eventually became a channel dedicated to the mediums of anime and manga with discussions about specific topics, reviews, recommendations etc. I’ve also been laying the ground to begin looking at and discussing tokusatsu which has become a recent interest of mine. If you’re interested in anime, manga or tokusatsu then I would fully encourage you to give my channel a shot and see if you enjoy the content.

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The Fascinating Impact Of The Moon Rabbit

Published April 10, 2023

I’m currently watching Ultraman Taro, as part of my recent fascination with tokusatsu, and there was a particular episode where they mentioned the rabbit on the Moon. As you can imagine, the people I was watching the show with were quite confused so I ended up having to explain what the Moon rabbit was to them. However, it brought to mind that I had actually come across the Moon rabbit in a variety of media and that it might be worth discussing. Therefore, I thought that I’d take a look at the fascinating impact of the Moon rabbit on media.

Let’s start with what the Moon rabbit is. When looking at the Moon from Earth, you will only see the near side of the Moon which is covered in lunar maria. Different cultures have interpreted these lunar maria differently with some believing it resembles a man’s face or a lady but the cultures of East Asia and the Native Americans interpreted the lunar maria as resembling a rabbit with the East Asian cultures also seeing a mortar that’s being used to make the elixir of life, mochi, medicine etc.

An outline showing a trace of the Moon rabbit and its mortar.

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The Strange Fusion Of Anime And Manga That Is Ga-nime

Published March 30, 2023

I remember doing some research recently on Yoshitaka Amano and spotted a term that I was unfamiliar with, “Ga-nime”. You can imagine my curiosity and, upon digging into it, I soon realised that Ga-nime was a strange fusion of anime and manga. Having learned about this, I thought it might be interesting to explain what Ga-nime is, how it’s unique and several other interesting details that I’ve found.

Something that’s important to note is that Ga-nime isn’t necessarily a style in and of itself and is actually a product line from the collaboration between Toei Animation, an anime company, and Gentosha, a publishing company. The name itself,画ニメ, is a fusion of the character 画, the second half of the word manga, and ニメ, the last two characters of the word anime. As the name implies, Ga-nime is a strange fusion of anime and manga which is a short work, distributed as an OVA, that features voice acting and music but very minimal animation, mostly being still images that are occasionally supplemented by limited animation, computer animation etc.

Anyone familiar with Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork will immediately recognise his involvement in this Ga-nime.

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The Resilience Of The Talented Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Published March 13, 2023

When talking of great modern directors of anime films, you hear names such as Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosoda etc. but I always feel like the name “Hiromasa Yonebayashi” is too often missing from the conversation. I personally feel that the reason he’s not as spoken of as other directors is due to his more limited filmography but I personally admire his resilience and his films so I thought it would be worth speaking about the talented director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Born in Nonoichi in Japan on the 10th of July, 1973, Hiromasa Yonebayashi was inspired to work at Studio Ghibli after he saw the 1995 film “Whisper of the Heart”. Besides a few other projects, Hiromasa has predominantly worked on Studio Ghibli films such as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle etc. as a key animator and an in-between animator while he notably served as the animator director on the Studio Ghibli short Mei and the Kittenbus.

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An Overview Of The Unusual Appleseed Franchise

Published February 27, 2023

I’ve mentioned the Appleseed series several times on this blog, mainly in reference to anime CGI films, but it occurred to me that it may be helpful to provide an overview of this unusual franchise. I say unusual because it feels like Appleseed has become a franchise whose sole purpose is to experiment with CGI but, understandably, it didn’t start out this way, hence the reason for this overview.

Appleseed first took shape as a manga series written and drawn by Shirow Masamune, famous for his creation of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. Unusually, the manga wasn’t serialised originally with the first four volumes being released directly to market although a later attempt to serialise it was aborted after Shirow Masamune said that serialisation didn’t suit the series. The plot of the manga, which would serve as the basis for its many adaptations, follows Deunan Knute, a human woman, and Briareos Hecatonchires, a human man who, due to his injuries, has undergone extensive surgery which has resulted in him becoming a cyborg, who serve in ES.W.A.T. to protect Olympus, a new, seemingly idyllic, city-state established in the aftermath of World War III. The manga was well-received with praise for its action, humour and themes and, most notably, won the 1986 Seiun Award for Best Comic.

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