Osamu Tezuka made a lot of comics. According to Wikipedia , over 700 works, comprising more than 150,000 pages. I doubt even half of that has been translated into English. So the view any North American reader has of his work – unless that reader both is fluent in Japanese and has access to a library-worth…
Universal City, California, March 12, 2026 – The continuing popularity of manga and anime will once again be integral to Universal Fan Fest Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood with the addition of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon the Miracle: Moon Palace Chapter Deluxe, an all-original Japanese manga and CG anime short film that originally debuted as…
It’s tough to be a fan of someone when you’re not quite sure what aspect of their work you’re a fan of. I read a big bunch of Osamu Tezuka books, mostly published by Vertical, more than a decade ago – MW, Ayako , Ode to Kirihito, Apollo’s Song, a few others – and liked them…
We all have expectations for certain kinds of stories – a romance will have two characters fall in love and get together by the end, a mystery will have at least one murder to be solved, an epic fantasy will have un’usual apo’strophes in the middle of words. The first expectation is that they will be…
It’s fascinating the way that art comics are similar across vastly different cultures, the same way adventure comics are. (“OK, there are these guys, with crazy powers, wearing colorful clothes, and they fight!”) If I were being saturnine, I’d say something like “it’s almost like we’re all human beings.” The Man Without Talent is almost…
I’m not a major Manga fan but am certainly aware of the most popular and enduring properties, such as Gunnm, a.k.a. Battle Angel Alita, which ran from 1990-1995 and was adapted into two-part anime. By 2000, James Cameron had been made aware of the series and immediately wanted to bring it to the big screen….
Is it damning with faint praise to say of a painter that you love her brushstrokes but aren’t crazy about her paintings? I hope not, because I’m about to say that about Kaoru Mori’s first major manga series Emma. Emma originally ran for 72 chapters — 52 of the main story, and a follow-up 20 side-story chapters…
People will tell you that The Ghost in the Shell is a single story, about a cyborg cop in a complex future Japan and her pursuit of a mysterious AI called The Puppeteer. They are lying to you. Oh, that thread is here, and the very last installment here sees the conclusion of that story….
Reading a book at four-year intervals is probably not the best way to keep it in the front of one’s mind. But I read the first two volumes of Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro (one and two) back in 2010, and then the third in 2014, so, since it’s 2018 now, I couldn’t continue any earlier than now,…
I believe I’ve had this book on the shelf for ten years, which means it’s one of the small number of things that survived my 2011 flood. (That destroyed my entire basement and somewhere around 4,000 books.) I’m not sure why or how this book survived, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t managed to read…
Based on the award-winning manga by Fumiyo Kouno, In This Corner of the World, bolstered by emotionally resonant storytelling and exquisite hand-drawn animation, is an empowering coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of WWII and captures the resilience and triumph of the human spirit. The award-winning story of In This Corner of the World follows a…
Paramount Pictures has released the new Ghost in the Shell ad to air Sunday during the Super Bowl. The film opens March 31 and was directed by Rupert Sanders. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt and Juliette Binoche and adapts the popular Manga and Anime series as a live-action adventure. The plot…
