If Studio Ghibli produced Saw: Made In Abyss Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray review
WARNING: SIGNIFICANT, DETAILED SPOILERS AND GRUESOME IMAGERY AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Random DVD review: Big Fish & Begonia
Another family-friendly choice, this film makes an interesting complement/counterpoint to my recently reviewed A Letter to Momo in that this Chinese-produced animation also explores Eastern concepts of the afterlife from a young person’s perspective. When I picked it up, I didn’t even realise this wasn’t Japanese…
Random DVD review: A Letter to Momo
Part of a bundle of cheap DVDs from my local HMV store, I chose Momo as the first of them to watch (and also as it was one of the few child-friendly ones I could share with my son). This is a 2011 theatrical anime release directed by Hiroyuki Okiura, whose most prominent previous directorial work was the tonally…
The most remote anime merchandise store in the UK?
I have just returned from my spring break visit to my family in the far north of Scotland, to Thurso - the town where I was born. On my last visit in October 2018 I was pleasantly surprised to find a new comic shop in the town centre. I was even more pleasantly surprised that the shop still existed on my return…
Doctorkev’s 2018 Postmortem - Part 2
Right. Here’s where the struggle gets real. With so much great TV anime in 2018, how on earth to choose which is best? This is my best shot for 11-20. For the also-rans and not quites, see part one of this article here, the same caveats mentioned there still apply.
Doctorkev’s 2018 Postmortem - Part 1
There’s nothing quite like good timing. A review of 2018 at the end of March 2019 probably isn’t the best example of this – but bear with me here. Some of 2018’s shows have only just finished airing their final episodes, so now I feel I’m in a good position to comment on what I thought was a great year for TV anime.…
Random Blu-ray Review: The Red Turtle
I have come to the conclusion that my little darling 8-year-old son is a xenophobe. He begrudges his French lessons in school. He noisily demands that the European/African/Asian children in his class “Speak ENGLISH!” and he gets irritated when I’m watching subtitled anime on television and I tell him there’s no dub…
Random Blu-ray Review - Patema Inverted
I have a confession to make. I have a deep-seated horror of wide-open spaces that when it strikes causes me palpitations, a sensation of overwhelming vertigo and an almost irresistible urge to grab onto something solid for dear life or go hide underground somewhere. My fear is that perhaps gravity might decide to…
Random Blu-ray review: Princess Arete
Another lucky haul from my local secondhand store’s anime shelf, Princess Arete is a relatively obscure anime movie I knew next to nothing about before I claimed the pretty limited edition box as my own. It has a good pedigree as a production of Studio 4°C (Memories, Mind Game, Tekkonkinkreet and Berserk - The Golden…
Random Blu-ray review: The Case of Hana and Alice
My local secondhand media/electrical goods store has a small anime section with a fairly swift turnover of content. I visit it a couple of times a month, and often there will be something obscure that grabs my eye - like recently a rare Gamecube game (Ikaruga) or a boxset of an anime series I haven’t seen (Michiko and…
My thoughts on the Winter 2019 Anime Season
I have been in love with anime since I first caught Miyazaki’s Laputa, Castle in the Sky (presumably the old Streamline dub) on UK terrestrial TV in the 1980s. A few years later, my folks moved to the city where I gained access to cable TV and all manner of obscure channels. Some channels showed anime like Gall force…