Category: Anime

Some Amazing Classic Anime Recommendations

Published December 9, 2021

It’s easy, just like any medium, to get distracted by new anime releases and to forget about many of the amazing anime that have been released throughout history. Therefore, I thought I might do something a little different than usual and recommend some of my favourite classic anime series and films. While I’m not going to try to make these classic anime recommendations obscure, I will be trying to recommend amazing titles that aren’t particularly obvious.

Starting this off, I’d like to bring particular attention to a series called “Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water”. Directed by Hideaki Anno of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame, the series is loosely based on “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and begins with Jean, a 14 year old French inventor, coming across an acrobat called Nadia who is being pursued by several villains for her mysterious blue necklace. The series has an incredible sense of wonder and has crisp animation, wonderful characters and numerous twists and turns. It would honestly probably be one of my favourite anime series of all time if it wasn’t for a dreadful filler arc that has become known as the “Island Arc“. Nonetheless, I’d enthusiastically recommend this series to anyone eager to find a new anime to watch.

An image of the character's of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. — Some of the cast of “Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water”.

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What’s The Difference Between A Great And Terrible Prequel?

Published December 6, 2021

I have recently been watching some of the more questionable in quality Don Bluth films in an effort to both say that I have seen them and to learn more about his change in style over time. One of these films was Bartok the Magnificent, a prequel to the 1997 film Anastasia, that follows Bartok, the minion of Rasputin in the original film. Watching Bartok the Magnificent, I observed that it was clearly a below average animated film but, more importantly to me, it was a terrible prequel. Realising the difference between the quality of the movie and its purpose as a prequel, I decided to take a look at what makes a good prequel and a bad one.

Having brought up Bartok the Magnificent, let’s begin by analysing this film. The structure of the film isn’t terrible even if it is very generic. Bartok is an entertainer who works with a bear called Zozi, voiced by Kelsey Grammer with the character being a clone of Fraser Crane. They visit Moscow and Bartok finds himself responsible for rescuing the child Tsar who has been kidnapped by Baba Yaga. He encounters Baba Yaga, must perform some tasks for her in return for the location of the Tsar and there is a twist, albeit a predictable one at that, near the end of the film. While not a good film in my humble opinion and it’s certainly not one that I could imagine myself rewatching in my spare time, there is some pleasant animation, the characters are voiced well and there are moments of entertainment from time to time.

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Why Anime Is Sometimes Localised To Hide Their Country Of Origin

Published November 25, 2021

When I was a child, I ended up watching a lot of series that I would later discover were anime series. From Pokémon to Beyblades to Yu-Gi-Oh! to Medabots to many more, it’s surprising how much anime I watched back then. However, I was completely unaware that these shows that I enjoyed so much were from Japan! Why was I and so many others oblivious to this information? The answer is surprisingly straightforward, because the American licensors didn’t want you to know! Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at why anime is sometimes localised to hide their country of origin.

I should start off by clarifying that I will be looking at localisation when it comes to English language releases of these shows. Anime has been incredibly popular internationally for decades and it’s explosion in popularity in the English speaking world was actually later than many other countries. However, I’m quite unsure about how heavy-handed censorship and localisation were in these countries and, if you’re aware of how this was handled in particular countries, feel free to comment below.

Those aren’t donuts! Those are rice balls!

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Why I Love To Be Able To See Concept Art

Published November 22, 2021

There are a wide variety of extras that I love to get along with the media that I enjoy. From commentaries to behind the scenes information to appendixes, there is so much extra content that I love to see included with releases. However, an area that I would love to see more from would be concept art, an extra that I would consider to be highly underrated.

First, let’s discuss what concept art is. Concept art is artwork that is produced for a wide variety of creative mediums such as animation, graphic novels, video games, live-action media etc. These concept art will develop ideas for characters, settings, technology etc. and will tend to go through several iterations as feedback, both creative and practical, is received. Concept art can be used for a variety of purposes from advertising to refining the product itself to even seeking funding from investors.

Original concept art for Darth Maul which is drastically different to how he would later appear in the Star Wars franchise.

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The Unique, Stunning Experimental Anime Shorts Of Osamu Tezuka

Published November 11, 2021

I recently read The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, a manga biography of the life of Osamu Tezuka, and found a particular aspect of his career especially fascinating. I was already quite familiar with his manga works, his anime offerings such as Animerama etc. but I was really surprised to learn how many anime shorts he produced over his career. These anime shorts were experimental, unique, stunning and I wanted to tell others about this incredible aspect of Osamu Tezuka.

In order to explain the production of his first experimental short, I have to discuss the state of anime at the time. In the early 1960s, the television industry was booming in Japan but TV anime was practically non-existent due to competition from American animation. Tezuka, however, believed in the potential of animation and was determined to develop animation both for television and short films that would push the boundaries of the medium. This resulted in the studio’s first projects being the Astro Boy television series, which I’ve spoken about before, and the experimental shorts “Tales of a Street Corner” and “Male”.

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The Wonderful And Spectacular Composer Yoko Kanno

Published October 21, 2021

With the news that Yoko Kanno is returning to the Cowboy Bebop franchise by composing for the live-action adaptation, I thought it might be time to take a look at her history and career. Famous, and justly so, for her work on composing soundtracks for anime, this is merely one facet of her work and only one reason why the composer Yoko Kanno is so wonderful and spectacular.

Let’s start by looking at her early life. Yoko Kanno was born on the 18th of March, 1963 and found herself fascinated and drawn to the hymns sung at the church she attended. She learned how to play the piano at a very young age and ended up participating in a variety of composition contests. She eventually attended Waseda University, majoring in literature although she did end up joining a band elective where she discovered popular music such as pop and jazz. During this time, a company named Koei, which later merged with Tecmo to become Koei Tecmo, approached Yoko Kanno and asked her to compose the soundtrack for a game called Nobunaga’s Ambition. She accepted and the success of the game ended up jump starting her professional career.

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Eiichi Yamamoto: One Of The Amazing Pioneers Of Anime

Published October 7, 2021

I was deeply saddened to hear that legendary anime director Eiichi Yamamoto passed away recently. One of the amazing pioneers of anime, it is hard to overstate how important Eiichi Yamamoto was to the medium. Therefore, I thought it worth taking a look at who he was, his body of work and how his legacy has helped to shape modern anime.

After Eiichi Yamamoto graduated from high school, he joined Otogi Pro, a company established by mangaka Ryuichi Yokoyama to experiment with animation. It wasn’t long afterwards that Osamu Tezuka established a new animation studio called “Mushi Production” and Eiichi Yamamoto ended up joining the company. He would go on to be heavily involved with the new studio’s two initial offerings, the experimental short film “Tales of a Street Corner” and the television series “Astro Boy”, arguably the most important anime series of all time!

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The Four Dere Archetypes Found In Japanese Popular Culture

Published October 4, 2021

There are a lot of tropes that can be discussed when it comes to Japanese popular culture but certainly some of the more popular ones are the four “Dere” archetypes found in these media. Admittedly, I was only familiar with two of these archetypes prior to researching topics for this article so I was quite surprised to learn that there were more than I was already aware of. Given that, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at and examine these archetypes.

First, let’s take a look at the general term “Dere”. Dere, written in Japanese as デレ, is a shortening of the word deredere which means lovestruck. Within Japanese popular culture, these dere archetypes are typically female although there are occasional male examples. It’s also important to note that, while dere is famously associated with Japanese media and has been named thusly, there are plenty of examples of characters from other cultures that fit into these archetypes.

Tsundere

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An Overview Of The Ghost In The Shell Franchise

Published September 23, 2021

I’ve recently been reviewing the Ghost in the Shell manga on my YouTube channel and it has truly surprised me how different the Ghost in the Shell manga can be compared to the anime films and TV series that I’ve watched. Whereas I tended to think of Ghost in the Shell predominantly as an anime franchise, which in many ways it is, this experience has made me think about the Ghost in the Shell series as a whole and I recently decided that it was time that I provide an overview of the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

Of course, the most logical place to start with an overview of the Ghost in the Shell franchise is the original manga that started it all. Originally serialised from 1989-1991, Ghost in the Shell was written by Shirow Masamune, who previously got his start by drawing an original doujinshi story. The manga is set in the near future and follows Section 9, a special division of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs that deals with cyberterrorism and cybercrime. While Section 9 is made up of many members, we predominantly follow Motoko Kusanagi, often simply referred to as “The Major”, as she investigates a series of seemingly unrelated events that are not what they first appear to be.

The cover for the first manga volume of Ghost in the Shell.

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Japanese Words That Are Used Surprisingly Differently In Other Languages

Published September 20, 2021

I’ve always found the differences between the Japanese language and other languages to be particularly fascinating. I’ve touched on this before when I discussed “Literal Vs Adaptive Translation: Which Is Better?” and brought up the fact that English and Japanese are from two completely differently language families, meaning that many Japanese sentences can be translated in multiple ways and still be “correct”. However, something that I’ve wanted to discuss for a while are Japanese words that are used surprisingly differently in other languages.

The first word I would like to take a look at is a word that I’m sure many of you are intimately familiar with, anime. Written as アニメ in Japanese, notably in katakana to denote that it’s a foreign word, the word anime is an abbreviation of the Japanese word for animation, アニメーション, which in and of itself is a loanword from English. However, what I find quite interesting is the difference in the use of the word anime between Japanese and other languages. Outside of Japan, the term anime is used specifically to refer to animation that is produced in Japan, albeit with some entities trying to change that definition, while in Japan, the term anime actually refers to any and all forms of animation. I’ve noticed that some people struggle with this concept, the idea of anime referring to anything animated probably seems preposterous, but that doesn’t change the fact that that is what the word means in Japan.

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