One sunny day, a cat and her brood of kittens go for a walk in the city. One little kitten, a gray tabby. Meanders off and becomes separated from her family. After dodging giant dogs and rushing cars, she collapses in a park, where a mother and her toddler son pick her up and take her home. They can’t keep [...]

(Note: the following piece contains graphic descriptions of sex and non-consensual sexual acts. If you find that sort of thing is offensive then consider yourself forewarned.) So – did you hear there’s this game out there that lets you rape girls? Actually, ‘lets you rape girls‘ is a mischaracterization. The game, RapeLay (as in ‘rape lay‘ – for some reason [...]

We’re readers. When we moved a couple years ago Shapiro Keats did a quick count of our books; it was something like 1,700 and since then we’ve bought more. Gohan is quickly amassing collection to rival ours, though. At least they don’t take up as much space because they tend to be very short. Here are the Asian-themed picture books [...]

Ryuhei Kitamura is kind of a hit-or-miss director with me. I love his cult classic Versus, and Godzilla: Final Wars, but his other stuff hasn’t been that great. Sky High was boring as Hell, and Azumi, while it had great action sequences, was at least an hour too long. I used to think Kitamura was only good at one thing- [...]

A decade or so ago, finding anime and other Asian media used to be hard.  Fans had to settle for whatever mediocre dubs made it onto television, mail order from small suppliers like AnimEigo, lurk Usenet for fansub contacts or scrounge for low-quality videotape dubs at fan conventions.  Today, though, one can pick up DVDs of the new Astro Boy [...]

Yeah, this is short.  Give me a break; the baby’s crying. At first, Baccano! seems like it’s going to be…madcap. Like a heist comedy, or one of those movies from the 1960’s with a huge ensemble cast where everyone is competing in a cross-country airplane race to win a prize. But only halfway through the first episode, you have to [...]

(I recently started playing through Lost Odyssey, probably the first great Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360, again and was satisfied to note that the game is every bit as awesome as I remember. Then I recalled that I wrote a review of the game for my local game store’s newsletter back when the game was released. The review wasn’t [...]

Finally, the last of my Halloween Asian horror reviews! Unfortunately, the movie sucked. There are spoilers. Cure (Japan, 1997) Cure is billed as a horror movie, but it’s really more of a psychological thriller. I wanted to like Cure, I really did. The concept is, as far as I know, unique among suspense films. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into [...]

If it’s released under the Criterion Collection label, it’s probably either awesome or boring. Which is this? Jigoku (Japan, 1960) In the beginning of Jigoku, two young men hit someone with their car, then drive off, leaving him to die in the street. What they don’t know is that someone saw them. But this isn’t I Know What You Did [...]

Spoiler-free! Acacia (South Korea, 2003) Acacia looks to be a ‘bad seed’ movie, where the evil adopted kid insinuates himself into a nice family and then proceeds to weak havoc. But in a clever inversion of the genre, the ‘bad seed’ has every right to be pissed, and the movie turns what appears to be a worn-out theme into a [...]

Spoilers abound. You have been warned! Wag Kang Lilingon (The Philippines, 2006) Wag Kang Lilingon (Don’t Look Back) is two films for the price of one, tied together at the end by a clever plot twist. The twist is the best part of the movie, and it’s kind of a shame you have to sit through both films before you [...]

I’m under your bed, licking your floor I’ll be out of town until Monday afternoon, but next week will be packed with the last six reviews I need to complete my goal. Also, like I did last year, I’ll be posting a ghost story every day in the week leading up to Halloween! The Unborn (Thailand, 2003) I hope I [...]

Almost halfway there! Biozombie (Hong Kong, 1998) Biozombie, despite the title, isn’t really a horror movie. There are zombies, of course, but in the end it’s a comedy, albeit one with a surprisingly bleak ending. It predates Shaun of the Dead by six years, but came six years after Dead Alive. Woody and Bee are employees in a crowded Hong [...]

Pulse (Japan, 2001) Entry # 5 in my horror marathon is something a little different: a subtle, low-key film thick with dread, surprisingly non-violent and with only a couple of the usual Asian-horror suspects. Pulse begins as two stories that intersect about three-quarters of the way through the movie. Michi is a young woman who works at a Tokyo plant [...]

This review contains mega-spoilers. You have been warned! Inner Senses (Hong Kong, 2002) Most horror movies have that one scene where the main character tries to tell someone about the ghost/demon/monster/killer, only to be told they’re crazy. Of course, the main character invariably ends up being right: there is a ghost/demon/monster/killer out there. Except in Inner Senses. In this film, [...]