One of the finest anime made in recent years, Emma: A Victorian Romance is also a testament to the care RightStuf/Nozomi Entertainment takes with their releases. While season one is available only as a box set, it doesn’t much matter. I’m pretty sure no one can watch Emma without wanting to follow this powerful love story to its conclusion.
The series opens in a middle-class household in Victorian London. Emma is a maid for Mrs. Stowner, a retired governess. The pair have been together many years- Mrs. Stowner hired Emma when she was just a child, and has educated her to a level most lower classes of that time could never hope to attain. Mrs. Stowner’s care has created a model young lady: intelligent and observant, unfailingly polite and quiet, and sharply conscious of her place in society.
Once again a mainstream news source has written an article about a trend imported from Japan. This time it’s the “Elegant Gothic Lolita” fashion trend, the paper is the New York Times.
The article is interesting enough, and the girls whose pictures accompany it are cute. But for some reason they don’t look ‘Lolita-y’ enough for me. I think it is because I saw a couple of EGLs in Harajuku when I visited Japan, and they were Lolita-y to the extreme. Like creepily adorable china dolls, drowning in ruffles.
So ladies, when it comes to EGL fashion, remember…MORE RUFFLES! And more ribbons. And bonnets. And banana curls. And more ruffles. That’s the way to go!
Hate to say it, but if I were rich I’d make one terrible philanthropist - I’d be too busy spending my money on excessive crap like the Limited Edition Fiat 500 being produced to celebrate the famous thief’s long association with the vehicle, and more specifically the DVD release of Lupin III: Green vs. Red.
Seriously - starving kids vs. Lupin sports car ? Not a contest…
I tried to find images of the vehicle in question, but failed miserably - if I come across anything I’ll post it here post-haste.
Our comrade-in-arms AnaKhouri loves Mushi-shi, and now that FUNimation is bringing over the live-action film, thought it would be cool to import the series from Hulu. Alas, they’ve only got the first 12 episodes, but that should be plenty of Mushi-shi to induce you to buy the DVD’s.
I won’t bother re-iterating everything that was said at this year’s ‘State of the Anime Industry’ panel, especially since Toon Zone did such a bang-up job of summarizing it, but I would be remiss in not mentioning some of the high points.
Overall, the anime biz is not headed over a waterfall, but there is still much work to be done to re-vamp the business model in order to bring the industry back to pre-crash levels. Online access (read: ‘piracy’) has definitely had an effect, but as has been stated many times before, this level of fan interest can be harnessed to the distributor’s advantage if they’re clever and open to re-assessing old business models.
Here’s a snippet:
It’s no secret that CD and DVD sales in the United States have been dropping of late, and Kelts pointed out that anime has been especially hard-hit by the loss in sales. However, anime’s popularity has been rising, with conventions breaking attendance records almost every weekend — a fact reinforced by Sheehan, who said that 25% of the attendees of the FUNimation panel said it was their first anime convention. Kelts began the panel by asking the participants what they were doing in response to the loss of home video sales. Iyadomi pointed out that anime companies spent years developing a market for selling anime TV series on single-volume DVDs, only to be undermined when American companies started selling entire seasons of TV shows on DVD. This left them caught between a market that was rejecting single-volume discs for season sets and licensors who are still highly resistant to the idea of selling entire seasons of TV at once. Bandai has been trying to balance between price point and content that can still be profitable, like shipping 13-episode products in 2 disc sets.
I think if you ask most people whom they regard as Japan’s greatest filmmaker, the consensus would undoubtedly be Seven Samurai director Akira Kurosawa. A recent article at the Japan times, aptly titled ‘Hayao Miyazaki - Japan’s Greatest Director’, wonders if that august title might not fit their greatest animator…oh and, um - sorry about the picture…I couldn’t resist.
Most praise his works. Haruhiko Kamijima, a novelist who authored a book about Miyazaki’s movies, said no Japanese director — including Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu or Takeshi Kitano — has had a bigger impact on the worldwide movie industry than Miyazaki. That is partly because his movies are animated, an area in which Japanese artists shine, he said. He favors Miyazaki’s recent works, and “Ponyo” is Miyazaki’s best, he said.
Miyazaki is an excellent animator, Kamijima said. He is good at drawing. “Ponyo” was done without using computer graphics, which means Miyazaki and his staff drew all the pictures needed to produce the movie, Kamijima said.
“Miyazaki goes against the current trend by not using a computer,” he said.
Meanwhile, Kaoru Kumi, who wrote a book critical of Miyazaki’s movies, dismisses him as a mere animator and says his scripts are of low quality. Miyazaki does not begin with a script. Rather, in many cases he first comes up with a visual idea, and then thinks of a story to back up the visual, resulting in strange and arbitrarily made-up plots, Kumi said. He also complains that Studio Ghibli has not turned out a great director because Miyazaki cannot teach scriptwriting.
Don’t get yer panties in a bunch - this has nothing to do with Stephen Spielberg’s proposed Ghost in the Shell film…but last night I was lying on the couch like a beached whale watching Neil Marshall’s Doomsday on Time Warner Pay-per-View, and it struck me how similar Rhona Mitra’s character was to our favorite cyborg spec-ops hottie, Major Kusanagi.
Mitra’s character, though she has a proper name, is referred to simply as ‘Major’ for the entirety of the film, and has nearly the exact haircut as Kusanagi, minus the purple tint. Add a minor cybernetic enhancement (a removeable right eye which she can use as a surveillance camera) and some serious military hardware - and I think you know where I’m going with this. If they go with caucasian actors for the GitS film (and let’s face it - they probably will), I think they could certainly do far worse than Ms. Mitra.
As for the film itself, it is stupendously retarded - and yet incredibly entertaining. I may actually spring for the DVD…
If you haven’t checked out video-on-demand website Hulu, you really owe it to yourself to do so - like right now. Well, not right right now. Finish reading this, then go check it out. And when you get there, dig it - they’ve got a new anime-specific channel serving up a number of great series. In addition to Speed Racer and Astro Boy (which have been there a while), Hulu now features some more recent fare like Death Note and Naruto. This is the kind of thing that gives me the warm fuzzies.
I dearly want Hulu to succeed in a big way. It’s a fairly brilliant enterprise, and yet it’s operating on the same business model that’s kept broadcast television going for years - paid advertising. And to their credit, the ads are fairly unobtrusive - most amount to 15-second spots every 20 minutes or so. A small price to pay for being able to watch a wide array of film and television at a moment’s notice.
UPDATE: Just came across this nice Wired piece on Jason Kilar, the ex-Amazon exec who helped Hulu get off the ground…and it turns out Speed Racer’s existence on Hulu is not an accident…gotta love it.
OK, this is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while (and I am on the Internet almost every day, so I have seen some weird shit).
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Fist of the North Star, the creators of the New FotNS film held a wedding for Kenshiro and Yuria (she’s the girlfriend he supposedly spent 100 + episodes looking for…not like anyone read it for the plot. Exploding heads, baby!).
Anime News Network has posted several links to pictures from the ‘wedding’. Guests included fans, the original creators Buronson and Tetsuo Hara, and people involved with the new movie.
The happy couple was represented by…statues of Kenshiro and Yuria. At least Yuria dressed for the occasion.
I don’t know if I am more disturbed by this or by the revelation that there is apparently a Fist of the North Star stage musical.
MSNBC’s Sexploration column discusses the mainstreaming of otaku fetishism, of all things - although they neatly overstep the twin-headed viper that is yaoi / yuri (unlike us, who unceasingly stare into the abyss so that we may spare you the horrors within…).
Guess that would’ve really scared the curious onlookers peeking in from the safety of their cubicle farms.
When anime conventions started in the U.S. back in the mid-1990s, the main demographic was mostly Asian college-age male students, says 32-year-old otaku expert Lawrence Eng. “Now, at least 50 percent are female,” he says. “Fandom itself is more diverse than ever.”
Within the adult realm of otaku culture, cuteness is fetishized (hence the Hello Kitty sex toys) and gender is often bent or dissolves altogether. Women are penetrated by octopi and young women in short school-girl skirts save the world. Men, on the other hand, are often passive worshipers of small figurines depicting sexy characters.
Rating: 
Hate to say it, but if I were rich I’d make one terrible philanthropist - I’d be too busy spending my money on excessive crap like the Limited Edition Fiat 500 being produced to celebrate the famous thief’s long association with the vehicle, and more specifically the DVD release of Lupin III: Green vs. Red.
I think if you ask most people whom they regard as Japan’s greatest filmmaker, the consensus would undoubtedly be Seven Samurai director Akira Kurosawa. A recent article at the Japan times, aptly titled 
Don’t get yer panties in a bunch - this has nothing to do with Stephen Spielberg’s proposed Ghost in the Shell film…but last night I was lying on the couch like a beached whale watching Neil Marshall’s 
OK, this is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while (and I am on the Internet almost every day, so I have seen some weird shit).
MSNBC’s Sexploration column 
