Long-time readers will remember me showcasing the work of Bristol based anime and manga artist Rory Doona on the site before – well, he’s back, this time with a few pieces he’s done for UK anime distributor Manga Entertainment.

To quote Rory: “Manga commissioned me to create a new mascot for their latest series of adverts…I drew inspiration from some of my favourite mascot characters like Miyazaki’s Totoro and Bastian Balthazar from The Never Ending Story. The mascot is also accompanied with a pink haired girl on his travels as well. Both as of yet do not have a name but I can pass on any good suggestions to Manga from your blog readers, what do your readers think they two characters should be called?”

Hit the comments below with your suggestions – click any of the images to see full sized versions. And don’t forget to follow Rory over on Facebook to see more of his work.

Layout designs on the Manga ads by Jelly Creative.

Last weekend saw the 17th London MCM Expo, with a record turn out of over 41,000 attendees as cosplayers, comic enthusiasts, videogamers, scifi fans and free huggers descended on the Excel Conference centre in London’s docklands.

For anime and manga fans the show is more like a giant dealer’s room than a full blown con, with only one anime themed panel over the two days, hosted by the UK’s three main distributors where they announced their upcoming releases for the year. You can check out the full details of their licenses elsewhere, but highlights included Beez Entertainment bagging fan hit Durarara!! and Manga UK’s announcement of Eden of the East.

As always, some of the best information comes to light with off the record chats with industry staff, including discussions I had with people about the recent news that US giant Funimation could well be sold off by it’s parent company Navarre. Specualtion was that a possible buyer could by a Japanese company, with Bandai, Aniplex or even manga publisher Kodansha being mentioned. Either way the vibe was that it was a positive step, rather than something that western anime fans should be panicking about.

Even more interesting – to me at least – was the result of my badgering people about the possibility of my current obsession Redline getting a US and UK release sooner rather than later. Now I’m sworn to secrecy over details, but I can tell you this: the film WILL be getting a western release, it could be this year, and some big players could be involved. I also found out that director Takeshi Koike and producer Katsuhito Ishii had checked out my review over at Anime News Network, and had liked what they had read – which is hardly surprising after I’d gushed all over the movie. But trust me, they deserve the praise.

So all in, London Expo is good day out. I got to meet up with some people I only usually chat to online, and grabbed a few bargains and new releases in the process. It might not be the in depth, anime orientated con that US fans get to visit on a regular basis, but I can heartily recommend UK fans drop by and check it out when they can, if only to get bundled about with the crowds and made to wonder whether the popularity of cosplaying as Yoko from Gurren Lagann is going to result in a spike in teenage pregnancies.

Photos supplied by Andrew Proom – check out his full set here.

Something different to kick off the second half of 2010, and to show what I’m going to be up to for the next few months. A teaser for my current project – and debut novel – God’s Switch, hopefully being published in 2011.

Simon gazed down across Bristol’s abandoned office blocks, silently wishing for the sound of sirens to shatter his boredom.

And he turned away from her and walked down the hill in the direction of Knowle. Chaos hunting.

No, I haven’t completely forgotten about this site – I’ve just been busy elsewhere. For a start, Anime News Network have just published my review of new Madhouse movie Redline. I suggest you get over there and check it out – I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it is one of the most exhilarating and exciting anime works I’ve seen in a very long time. As of writing Redline hasn’t had a public screening in Japan as far as I know, so I was very lucky to catch it in London at the beginning of the month. However a new teaser trailer dropped today, promising it would be out in ‘Fall 2010′. But out where? Interestingly an identical trailer was put out, with the same release date but in French. Is this a hint at a simultaneous worldwide release?

For even more on Redline, check out this weeks ANNcast, where you can also hear me chatting away about the state and history of anime fandom here and the UK, as well as my experiences using Twitter. I must say a huge thanks to Zac and Justin for having me on – it was a blast – as well as to everyone that sent in questions.

Also a blast was the Anime 3000 podcast recorded earlier in the month that focused on one of my biggest obsessions: Mamoru Oshii. Not only great fun but highly informative for me, as I was alongside two great Oshii experts and good friends of mine; Brian Ruh (author of the fantastic book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii) and Fernando Ramos (Japan based operative that wrote the review of Oshii’s Assault Girls for this site last year). It’s another great and essential listen, essential whether you’re a die-hard fan or just discovering the great man’s works for the first time.

Links:

• ANN Redline Review
• ANNcast – Manic Maughan-day
• Anime 3000 Panel – S03E04 – The Wonderful World of Mamoru Oshii

This is my original review of The Sky Crawlers, reposted to coincide with the film finally getting a release on Bluray and DVD – as well as a limited cinema run – here in the UK. Since I first reviewed it I’ve watched it countless times, and I must say with each viewing I’ve come to love it even more. In fact, it’s become one of my very favourite of Oshii’s works.

If you’ve read this site before, or even just glanced over it’s archives, then my appreciation and admiration of director Mamoru Oshii is clearly laid out. As such it would seem not only redundant but also somewhat self indulgent to elaborate further on my love of his tense political sci-fi dramas Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor, or his low budget, live action masterpiece Avalon. Ever since his latest feature film The Sky Crawlers was first announced I have been gripped with excitement and anticipation – although, as always, resigned to the long wait us western fans must endure before we are granted an audience. This week that wait finally ended, and putting aside my deep rooted fanboy allegiances for just under two hours, I was able to sit down and see if anime’s most esteemed auteur could still deliver the goods.

Based on a series of novels by Japanese author Hiroshi Mori, The Sky Crawlers takes its time in revealing it’s true nature to the viewer. Oshii is famous for never rushing his narratives and giving his viewers time to indulge in his slowly paced cinematography, but tSC takes its time in revealing even it’s true setting. Much of the truth about what is happening in the world it’s characters inhabit isn’t made clear until it’s final act, and as such it makes it hard to elaborate without drifting into spoiler territory. Simply put, it is set at a time – possibly the future, or equally maybe an alternate past – when humanity has decided that the only way to avoid war is to stage an artificial, and seemingly endless, one. As a result an eternal air conflict is fought between two rival corporations using WWII style fighter planes and bombers, just to fill the war cravings of the global media, economy and watching public.

This concept is not a new one for Oshii, it being the main driving theme of his second, complex Patlabor movie. Then the subject was how small scale, but very real, wars were allowed to rage unhindered in the less developed parts of the world so that the industrial nations could create the illusion of a lasting peace, and made in 1993 it gives a chillingly clairvoyant portrayal of how easily this cosy illusion can be broken through acts of terrorism. To Oshii war is a vital force in modern capitalist societies, the secret fuel that drives their economies and cultures, but while Patlabor 2 meditates openly and explicitly on this train of thought, tSC is all the more subtler. Throughout it’s duration it only hints at it’s thematic backdrop, preferring instead to focus it’s other unique ingredient; it’s characters.

If eternal, staged war is the formula for peace, then one huge moral question faces the society that puts it into practice: who will do the fighting? For the tSC the answer is the ‘Kildren’, apparently genetically engineered clones of teenage children, raised to do nothing but fly and fight for the corporations that mass-produce them. It is through their eyes that we slowly learn not only about their world, but also the abusive psychological effect it has on them. Raised to know nothing but war, they fly routine, daily sorties while filling the gaps within with drinking and mindless, detached sex. In fact everything appears detached to them; their lives are so routine – the war so endless – that even the thrills of partying and combat seem to bore them. The fact that they are designed to never age – forever staying young, knowing that they will only, inevitably, die in battle – only compounding their increasing alienation from both each other and the world they are supposedly fighting for.

The image of robotic, innocence stripped children being used as weapons in this way is a disturbing one, and one seen to devastating effect in Madhouses‘ groundbreaking 2003 series Gunslinger Girl. Now, as then, it appears the target of critique is anime itself, and perhaps to some larger extent Japanese culture as a whole. For decades anime and manga have made children their assassins and war heroes, and both Gunslinger Girl and Oshii attempt to deconstruct these respective memes, showing instead the brutal reality of how that could manifest in real life. tSC goes a stage further though, coupling this with the earlier theme of the need for perpetual war, and perhaps turning it into an attack on the endless repition of anime subject material, the boredom of the characters representing Oshii’s own disdain at the stale offerings much of the industry produces. At times it even feels like an attack on himself; the use of character names from his previous works is jarring to any watching fan, and coupled with his frequent visual signatures it is almost as though Oshii-san is looking back at his portfolio of work with disappointment at his own lack of originality. If The Sky Crawlers reassures his audience of only one thing its that he shouldn’t be so harsh on himself.

Visually, the film is sumptuous and intoxicating as we have come to expect from the director and his highly experienced creative team at Production IG. The green fields and cloudscape filled blue skies mark a refreshing change of palette from their usual dark, urban environments – but while also maintaining the director’s trademark cold, stark and lonely atmospheres. While the character design is suitably minimal compared to previous IG works, the mechanical design is as phenomenal as expected, the retro-but-futuristic fighter planes betraying a Miyazaki-like fetishism towards WWII aircraft engineering and attention to detail. The dogfight sequences themselves are breathtaking, and again show IG’s mastery of the use of combining CGI and traditional cell animation. Here they had help from FX studio Polygon Pictures, whose recent portfolio shows they are clearly industry leaders – and I don’t say that just because I know someone that works there.

In fact, the opening and regularly punctuating dogfight sequences are perhaps Oshii’s greatest trick. Not only do they break up the mesmerising monotony of watching the Kildren’s routine lives unfold, but they also make the audience participants in their world. The action sequences are so exhilirating, so beautifully choreographed that the viewer ends up almost craving them to return to the screen, and thus becomes the gawping, voyeristic, war-demanding public of the Kildren’s world, and thus ultimately the guilty abuser. It’s a master stroke of manipulation, and a subtle one that perhaps doesn’t truly reveal itself until the films final, bloody dogfight.

Despite it’s deeply thematic nature and social commentary, The Sky Crawlers is perhaps Oshii’s most accessible film since Patlabor. Gone, thankfully, are the philosophical ramblings of GiTS 2: Innocence, instead the discussion is more subtle, the plot more linear. In many ways it feels that Oshii, although rapidly becoming what is considered a veteran filmmaker, is still learning from mistakes and honing his skills. Plus, as always with his work, it’s nothing else if not a visual masterpiece, the imagery and score from Oshii’s long time composer of choice Kenji Kawai combining again to make a compelling and memorable viewing experience. It’s not an easy ride at times, but The Sky Crawlers is certainly one you can’t afford to miss.

This review is part of the Movable Manga Feast – a monthly get together of manga bloggers and critics where everyone gives their thoughts on the same title. This month it is being hosted by the legendary Ed Sizemore over at Manga Worth Reading.

Ginko treats those infected by mushi for a living, strange ephemeral creatures that seem to be part insect, part yōkai style Japanese spirits. They come in a seemingly infinite myriad of forms, but an infection is rarely a pleasant thing; some will leave you blind, some will make you grow horns, while others will make you dream of futures you’d rather not see. All of them, it seems, have the potential to change and wreck lives.

Written and drawn by Yuki Urushibara at the beginning of the last decade, the first thing that strikes you about Mushishi is its incredibly gentle, almost trance-like atmosphere. Although punctuated by occasional acts of violence or – more likely – visually disturbing, ‘body-horror’ style exorcisms, the stand alone stories presented in these two volumes all share the same, near hypnotic pacing. From the often minimal dialogue to the frequently hallucinogenic artwork the aim seems to be to intoxicate the reader, leaving you wondering exactly what blend of herbs this laid back medicine man is smoking in his ever present, hand rolled cigarettes.

In fact it’s Ginko’s slightly disheveled but charismatic appearance that helps drive one of Mushishi’s most interesting thematic devices. Constantly smoking and wearing a scruffy overcoat, though seemingly young and athletic with a mess of unkempt hair, he comes across as a super-cool mix of Spike Spiegal and Peter Falk’s Columbo. Either way, he should cast an unusual figure in the rural Japan that he inhabits, where almost without exception every inhabitant wears a kimono or similar traditional garb, but unless you break from the intoxicating world to consider it he just seems to fit in. In the notes in the back of Volume 1 Urushibara says she originally planned for some of the stories to have a contemporary setting, but mainly they ended up not “set at any particular time. Japan still in time of isolation, maybe? Or it feels like an age set between the Edo and Meiji periods. That’s the image I get anyway.”

This unusual, but always natural feeling, atemporality gives Mushishi a unique approach to examining a recurring theme in post war Japanese storytelling; the nation’s conflict between the feudal/spiritual and the modern/technological. Wearing his modern clothing and skulking through this timeless – but always somehow ancient – Japan, Ginko almost fulfills the the same role as Kyōgokudō in the novels of Natsuhiko Kyogoku, a man of rational thinking solving problems caused by superstition. But here in Mushishi it’s not that straight forward; things are far more muddied. The world here runs on different rules, where the mushi can and do cause what appear to be the fantastical and supernatural to occur. Paradoxically they can also be explained by a kind of quasi-science – somewhere between folklore and biology, where they can be cataloged and shown to exist in logical ecosystems. It’s almost as though Urushibara’s approach to this very Japanese conflict between the traditional and the modern is tinged with regret, as if she feels that although a more scientific national identity was inevitable that perhaps Japan has lost something, and she yearns for a imaginary time where folklore spirituality and science could co-exist.

It’s a fascinating idea, and one that works largely works well. If Mushishi has faults it’s that perhaps there’s little else here – sometimes the short stories work, other times they fall flat. These first two volumes at least lack characterization of much depth, Ginko’s past and own personal attachment to the mushi is only hinted at at best, while the other cast members are largely fleeting vehicles for the story and the mushi they carry. With its short, episodic form and enigmatic ‘healer for hire’ lead I was instantly reminded of Black Jack, but the moral questions and dilemmas of Tezuka’s classic are mainly absent here, and the tales feel disappointingly lighter for it. Not that it always misses, at times the balance between the gentle pacing and more disturbing aspects of mushi possession is perfect and darkly compelling, but there are a few too many occasions where it fails to reel in enough attention and commitment from the reader.

Not that I’ll let this put me off from reading more – and I wouldn’t let it put you off from trying these volumes out either. They represent the debut work of a young artist, and while perhaps lacking focus in character exploration and narrative efficiency they still show an abundance of talent and imagination, which are never things to pass lightly by.

Thirteen-year-old Asumi Kamogawa dreams of nothing else than becoming an astronaut, and while it may seem a lofty ambition at the best of times its one that carries an extra burden for the young school girl. When the first Japanese manned spacecraft Shishigō exploded mid-flight, the falling debris – both political and physical – decimated not only the nation’s ambitions in space but also left Asumi’s mother dead. Now she lives with her struggling father, scared of telling him that she has been accepted into the Tokyo Space School, and is about to be taken from his life by the same thing that took his wife.

It’s a powerful set up for Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica, a manga series that made an equally strong impact when it debuted in Japan in 2001, spawning not only an anime series but also a live action TV drama. As such it is perhaps – with the obvious exception of the forthcoming Chi’s Sweet Home – Vertical’s most commercial or mainstream license to date. But rest assured; based on this first volume it lives up to the high standard of quality and maturity that have become their trademark.

At its heart is a tale of the battle between nostalgia and progress, both for the space program and Asumi herself. Helping the teenager get to grips with the split of loyalty between her father and her dreams is Mr Lion – apparently a figment of Asumi’s imagination or the spirit of an astronaut that perished in the Shishigō disastor – and seemingly an interesting nod towards Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro. What makes this struggle between the two even more interesting and absorbing to read is how Yaginuma allows it to dictate the style of both his art and writing; contrasting the warmth of family life with the cold isolation of simulated space in the school’s training program. In this way it often reminded me of Makoto Shinkai’s Voices of a Distant Star, with its frenetic space battles contrasting with childhood memories, though here it’s the more mundane but equally deadly threat of another space disaster, the fear of which the Tokyo Space School attempts to drill into its students.

It is this that dominates the second half of this volume, as Asumi finds herself thrown into a daunting test along with two other girls. To give away the details of what they must do would spoil one of the cleverest aspects of the plot, but it’s enough to say that it allows Twin Spica to show how it effortlessly blends shojo drama and hard science fiction, as the girls must overcome both personal difficulties and the harsh practicalities of space travel. It is also where perhaps Twin Spica shows one of it’s very few weaknesses – the other students Asuma meets at the school seem at first glance to fall into very familiar manga stereotypes – the over confident pretty boy, the uptight otaku, the bitchy and elitist girl – but hopefully as the story progresses these characters will open up as relationships are formed and barriers dropped.

As always for Vertical prints the preview copy I was supplied with is of fantastic quality, though felt surprisingly light compared to their other recent, tome-like offerings. Not that I’m complaining at all; it’s a quick and engaging read, and I mainly mention it because it left me thirsting for more. The preview copy also includes two short, one-off pilot stories Yaginuma wrote introducing the events and characters – one of which is available on Vertical’s website. The coupling of sci-fi and personal drama is reminiscent of Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes – a personal favourite of mine – but with a more teenage and female orientation, providing a refreshing alternative to both the staid shojo works and dark science fiction manga I have read recently, with the book clearly poised to become a sure-fire hit with fans of both genres.

This year I was honoured to be asked to contribute to the Anime News Network guide to this season’s new TV shows. Well, I say honoured – it’s going to be quite a bit of work, and will involves me watching a lot of shows that I’d usually avoid like the plague. But hey, that’s what being a critic is all about – no one ever said it would be fun or easy.

I should be posting something up just about everyday, usually within 24 hours of the shows first airing in Japan, so remember to keep checking the link below on a regular basis – as well as what the other critics have got to say.

• Anime News Network: Spring 2010 Anime Preview Guide

An extra special treat for Tezuka Month – when I was in Thailand in January I was lucky enough to stumble across this edition of art and design mag A Day with a huge section dedicated to Astro Boy. Presumably timed to coincide with the release of the recent movie over there – nothing that special in itself, until you start to flick through it and realise that it’s clearly a publication that prides itself in it’s imagery, design and layouts.

For a start, check out this transparent overlay showing a cut-away image of Astro’s workings – a great bit of magazine design work:

Similarly, in the front cover there’s an insert showing how the look of Astro has changed over the decades in his various incarnations:

In total there’s way over 20 pages of this stuff – covering Tezuka, his other creations, and Astro Boy merchandise amongst more – all beautifully laid out and put together. Sadly I can’t read any of the text because its all in Thai, but it really doesn’t matter, it’s just so gorgeous to look at. It’s funny, just the other weekend on the Anime 3000 podcast we were discussing the future of magazine publishing and new technologies, but digging this out again to have my first proper look since I got home reminds me just how impressive printed media like this can be when done right. Check out the image gallery below to see what I mean.

This is the first in a few posts making up my – slightly last minute – contribution to Tezuka Month, that was kicked off by Evan Minto and the guys over at Anigamers. Starting with this look at Vertical’s recent paperback reissue of MW, I’ll be posting a few different things up over the next few days.

From the first few pages its clear that 1976’s MW was Tezuka proving that he could write for an adult audience beyond the teenage consumers of Astro Boy and Black Jack, as the reader is bombarded with images of violence and – perhaps symbolically – the graphic death of a small boy. The book is littered throughout with events and images designed to surprise and disturb, but it never scoops as low as just pure shock tactics – instead MW demonstrates the manga master weaving a thrilling and thought-provokingly tense thriller that forms what was perhaps Tezuka’s most darkly adult work.

The book revolves around a cover-up of a chemical weapons test gone wrong on a Japanese island, a disastrous blunder that leaves an entire community dead. Only two witnesses survive – and several years after the event these two become the story’s central protagonists. The first is the enigmatic young bank clerk Michio Yuki, who’s exposure to MW – the deadly chemical of the aforementioned incident – has apparently lead him to becoming a violent sociopath. As a result he leads a secret life as a criminal mastermind, extortionist and woman-hating serial killer. Driven by a twisted sense of justice following the incident and what he saw as a young child on the island, the book follows him as he pursues a campaign of revenge against those responsible, those that hid the truth and ultimately the rest of the human race as a whole.

Our second lead player is the even more complex – and perhaps even more psychologically damaged – Father Garai. A Catholic priest and Yuki’s only true friend, he is haunted by guilt and his own perceived sin; not merely as his position stops him from revealing Yuki’s actions to the authorities but also because he partly blames himself for the young man’s rampage of terror. While the other inhabitants of the island perished in the accident, he and Yuki survived by accidentally hiding in a cave where Garai found himself sexually abusing the young boy, and 16 years later they are still lovers in the most forbidden of secret relationships. Torn between his desires and a sense of responsibility towards Yuki and his horror at his actions Garai spends the entire story grappling with his conscience and seemingly on the verge of becoming insane himself.

It’s this complex interplay between the two that Tezuka uses to explore the main theme of MW; the perceived conflict between good and evil. At first glance it is easy to see the two man taking these sides, but Tezuka never once allows anything to be so cut and dried. For every disturbing rape and murder we see Yuki commit we can still feel empathy for him and the pain of his childhood scars, and for all Garai’s moral righteousness it’s impossible not to see the blood on his cowardly hands. Tezuka uses these two to show the reader that far from a black and white conflict, the relationship between good and evil is in fact a symbiotic one; that just as Garai’s abuse helped create the killer Yuki, the priest’s abhorrence at his lover’s actions drove him into joining the clergy. And not only does good create evil and vice-versa, but the two require each other to continue to define themselves, the suggestion being that if this conflict then neither side can be victorious without losing all meaning and relevence.

It’s an ingenious and thought provoking angle of attack by Tezuka one of his favourite targets – organised religion – but it’s not the only one he takes aim at. Just as in Black Jack and his other works we see the media, politicians, corrupt business men and naive revolutionaries all feel his wrath, in his usually elegant yet blunt style. Along the way he pauses to tackle a number of other themes from the treatment of homosexuals in 1970’s Japan to the corruption of the country’s political parties. Of particular note is his assessment of Japan’s post-war dominance by America; the nation’s timid impotence in the face of their victorious enemy framed in stark contrast to Yuki’s unwavering virility; and it seems to be an interesting fore-shadowing of themes explored decades later by the likes of Mamoru Oshii and Katsuhiro Otomo.

The influence on Otomo and others’ work is apparent elsewhere too, especially in the fantastically accurate looking drawings of Tokyo’s architecture, where Tezuka seems to be enjoying his chance to draw the real over the fantastic for once. The art through-out is engaging and immaculate, and it’s a thrill to see him depicting the dark and disturbing in truly graphic detail – if it’s not clear yet then let me spell it out – MW is not a work for young children, by any stretch of the imagination.

As enthralling as the book is, it’s not without its flaws. For a start it’s portrayal of women, while perhaps a sign of the restrictions of Japanese society at the time, seems somewhat two-dimensional as they fall unquestioningly into Yuki’s murderous arms. Similarly a few leaps of believability are occasionally needed by the reader in order for Yuki’s schemes to succeed, especially when he passes himself off as a member of the opposite sex. His brother being a famous cross-dressing kabuki actor is used to explain this to a certain extent, but it still pushes plausibility when he’s impersonating a woman that the other characters are personally familiar with.

Not that any of this is should distract from your enjoyment. While Tezuka is famed for his ability to add depth and meaning to his children’s stories, it’s exhilarating to watch him work on an unashamedly adult tale. If you think you know his work but you’ve yet to read MW, then this book may very well challenge your perceptions. Which is, for me at least, something to always be relished.

Review based on a copy provided by the publisher.