Winter Days (冬の日, 2003)

My review of the poem adaptation Winter Days (Fuyu no hi, 2003) has been published at Midnight Eye. Unfortunately the official website, which was full of great images and biographies seems to have been taken down. I have a copy of the biographical information they had, so if I get the time (After Nippon Connection!!) I will try to translate some of the info about the more obscure animators for...

Nodame Cantabile (のだめカンタービレ)

Nodame Cantabile (のだめカンタービレ) is a popular, award-winning shōjo manga by Tomoko Ninomiya (二ノ宮知子). The series debuted in Kiss magazine in 2001 and the story is on-going with 19 volumes currently in print.The manga’s popularity has only increased in recent years with Fuji TV producing both a live action drama series and an anime based on the story. The drama ran from October 16 to December 25, 2006 and...

Doraemon Becomes International Ambassador

It was announced this week that Japan's foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, had appointed Doraemon as Japan's first ever "animation ambassador" in its drive to increase the popularity of Japanese pop culture overseas. Like Snoopy in the United States, Doraemon is a beloved cartoon character whose annual film outings are a much anticipated event by many Japanese families. Although he is little known...

Yoshishige Yoshida

Yoshishige "Kiju" Yoshida's work is being honoured by a retrospective called "Visions of Beauty" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Click above to watch the spectacular trailer for the event. The trailer also mentions that Eros + Massacre and two DVD box sets of Yoshida's work will be released on DVD in France on April 9th.The retrospective runs from March 26th until May 19th.Kiju Yoshida Tanpen...

Anime! High Art - Pop Culture

I had the opportunity this week to check out the Anime! High Art – Pop Culture exhibition at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main. The exhibition has been timed perfectly to coincide with Nippon Connection next month as well as Neo Tokyo3: Architecture in Manga and Anime running next door at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (until June 8th).The exhibition is broken into six main sections:...

Nippon Connection

The Nippon Connnection film festival in Frankfurt has finally unveiled its program for this year. Tickets go on sale March 17th and can be ordered via their website or from the venues. I'm excited to see that they will be doing a retrospective on Japanese Independent Animation from the 1960s until the present date. The only individual artists they mention are Renzo Kinushita, Yoji Kuri and Taku...