Penguin Highway, a 2018 animated feature based on the Tomihiko Morimi novel, represents the best and worst of anime. On the one hand it boasts a richly developed and wonderfully imaginative story that boasts both clever ideas and a warm, … Continue reading REVIEW: Penguin Highway (2018)
A particular kind of anime fan will likely have a ball with Blame!, a 2017 feature film based on a Tsutomi Nihei manga. Produced with fluid and impressively detailed computer-generated animation, it offers a serious science fiction story backed up with … Continue reading REVIEW: Blame! (2017)
This is one of the more unusual feature film projects that I have seen. In the mid-1980s the independent movie studio New World Pictures, run by the legendary low budget film producer Roger Corman, acquired the American rights to the … Continue reading REVIEW: In the Aftermath (1988)
Kai lives a sullen life in the coastal Hinashi Town with his umbrella-making grandfather and recently divorced father. Kai plays in a teen band with his friends Kunio and Yuho, though he is thinking of quitting. When a trip to … Continue reading REVIEW: Lu Over the Wall (2017)
A group of four animals – a puppy, a pheasant, a monkey, and a bear – leave their families to help with the Japanese war effort. After basic training, they are dispatched as paratoopers to invade Suwawesi and wrest control … Continue reading REVIEW: Momotaro, Sacred Sailors (1945)
An Enoshima high school is visited by a new exchange student with unearthly psychic powers, who seems to be taking over and controlling the student body one by one. At the same time a short chain of unrequited love affects … Continue reading REVIEW: Psychic School Wars (2012)
In medieval France, a young couple approach the local lord to request permission to marry. Rather than receive permission, the bride-to-be – Jeanne – is violently raped by members of the court. Abandoning her broken fiancee, Jeanne makes a pact … Continue reading REVIEW: Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Mary is staying with her Great Aunt Charlotte while waiting for her parents to return home and her school holidays to end. When she finds a strange blue flower in the woods, she finds herself whisked away on an adventure … Continue reading REVIEW: Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2017)
High schooler Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) lives in the mountainous Japanese town of Itomori, but yearns for the city life of Tokyo. One day she wakes up in the body of a Tokyo teenager named Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and he in … Continue reading REVIEW: Your Name (2016)
One thousand years after a global catastrophe, small pockets of humanity live on the fringes of a massive toxic jungle. Nausicaä (Sumi Shimamoto) is a princess of the Valley of the Wind. Her lands are invaded by the warlike Tolmekians, who … Continue reading REVIEW: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
