I’m sure I don’t need to tell any of you about the horror of the recent events in Japan, the news has been as unavoidable as it has been upsetting. As someone living here in the west (who also happens to have family and friends in Japan), it is also extremely frustrating – what can we do to help?
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.
Bradley Meek has more interests than he has time. He likes reading about science and politics, playing PC games and discovering new music, reading novels and comic books, playing complex board games and obsessively checking his Twitter feed. But what he always has more time for is his primary love, animation, and for the last three years he has been a staff reviewer on THEM Anime, and has also recently joined the staff of Anime 3000. Old or new, cute or manly, he has no fear and is willing to tackle any anime. Though, as he details below, this one was a “whoozy.”
Alex Leavitt writes for The Department of Alchemy, while working “for real” as a research specialist in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT in Boston, MA. After studying abroad in Kyoto, Japan in 2008, Alex returned to the States to travel around the country speaking at major anime conventions such as Anime Expo (Los Angeles, CA), Otakon (Baltimore, MD), and Anime Boston. Follow his eccentricities over on Twitter at @alexleavitt.
(Note: This is the second part of an ongoing review of RideBack. The first part can be read here and the final part here.)
So we’re here. Finally.
Actually, we arrived about 48 hours ago, after what seemed like a week of travelling. Hellish. But, of course, with hindsight completely worth it. Shinjuku is everything all the cliches say it is – Akira, Bladerunner and Neuromancer all rolled into one, but somehow weirder for not actually feeling that futuristic. Or at least, it’s a kind of retro futuristic, a reminder of the that 80’s cyberpunk vision that it inspired but never quite happened anywhere else. Like all sci-fi, they got some things wrong. Example? Well, it seems damn near impossible to find any public Wi-Fi round here. But why would you need it when everyone’s had 3G capable phones for over ten years?
Actually, there’s nothing funny about this. Nothing at all.
Miyagi Prefectural Police officials in northeastern Japan have announced on Monday that they discovered a man dead in his apartment underneath several hundred manga volumes and magazines. They are investigating the cause of death and whether the 37-year-old male company employee is another casualty of last week’s earthquake in Miyagi.
From Anime News Network.
NOTE: full review now posted here.
This one slipped past me apparently. Ether that or Production IG have been keeping it very, very tightly under wraps.
Either way, apparently July 12 will see a Japanese theatrical release of Ghost in the Shell 2.0; a new special edition of the 1995 classic featuring some re-done CGI visual effects and a whole new, remastered 6.1 soundtrack. Anime News Network has all the precise details, and the one thing that worried me most is in that list of names there is no mention of the film’s original director Mamoru Oshii. Presumably he’s been far too busy with Sky Crawlers – which this release seems to be aimed at promoting – to have got involved himself.
Another month, another Intrigue…
But a slightly special one this time, for me at least. Not only was it the launch party for the new D-Bridge album, but second on the bill was Belfast drum and bass deity Calibre. Anyone that knows me in person knows how my appreciation of the man’s production skills borders on the near obsessional, but surprisingly I’d never seen him DJ before, managing to miss his previous, fairly rare appearances in Bristol. Despite a heavy week and feeling pretty whacked out, there was no chance I was going to miss him doing a 2 hour set at my favourite night.
Stumbled across this yesterday; cool little clip following one of my favourite Detroit producers Theo Parrish as he wanders the streets of Motor City, recording sounds and ambiances before taking them back to his studio, chopping them up and making beats with ’em on his MPC. Worth checking out: