Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 32

"Jonathan Clements changed my life…"

Far be I from one to brag… much, but there is a glowing review of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis by Elizabeth Hand in the latest issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I am not sure how I am ever going to live up to many of the claims made in it, but I shall enjoy imagining how.

All For One…

The New Three Musketeers, a Japanese TV show based on the book by Alexandre Dumas, with a script by Welcome Back Mr McDonald's Koki Mitani. 40 x 20 minutes, running daily on NHK. What's not to like…?  Someone, surely, from the world of television must think this is worth a punt? Well, NHK does for a start, as they are apparently already running it in English on their international channel.

The Japanese have always done well with the source material. Dogtanian and the Three Musekehounds is...

Mad Dogs and Engrishmen

Back in the days of Anime UK we used to call it Japlish, but far leveller heads have prevailed in the mainstream, and today it is usually known as Engrish. It is an awful, fractured mangling of English, usually found in Japanese instruction leaflets and T-shirts, where someone has had a really good stab at English, but ended up saying something mildly rude or downright ludicrous.

But while we point and laugh at little old ladies with obscene phrases on their T-shirts, we should perhaps wonder ...

Survival of the Fittest

Out now in shops, my Doctor Who: Survival of the Fittest, for which I was asked to give Sylvester McCoy an unrepentant Nazi for a travelling companion. Herewith my 150 words from the liner notes:

My grandmother was convinced she'd been had. After gassing the nest and plugging up the holes, the exterminator returned a few days later to check on it. When he unplugged the entrance, a bunch of wasps flew out and away. But he assured us that the nest was dead, and that the fugitives were...

Dragon Half

I can't even remember the name of the fanzine. I do remember that back in 1995 when Schoolgirl Milky Crisis wasn't even a twinkle in my eye, they interviewed me about translating Japanese animation, and in passing, someone said that the closing theme of Dragon Half was "untranslatable". I said that nothing was truly untranslatable, although a faithful rendition of the song "Watashi no Tamagoyaki" would inevitably sound as odd in English as it did in the original Japanese.

"All right," they...

Unicorns & Cannonballs

I'll be in Dublin on the 20th-21st March for the second Irish Film Institute Anime Weekend, which will include screenings of Evangelion 1.11, Evangelion 2.0, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Gundam: Unicorn, and Blood: The Last Vampire. I'll be introducing some of the films and doing a panel or two, one of which is sure to involve Hugh David (ex of ADV Films), Andrew Partridge (Beez Entertainment) and I smacking chairs over each other's heads and arguing about the future of...

Licence to Thrill

I love my job. But it is my job. I write for money. Copyright and its enforcement makes it possible for me to earn a living as an author and, hopefully, not die penniless like Sir Walter Scott.

Because I blogged earlier about the PLR, it's only fair that I should also mention the sterling work done by the ALCS, the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, which collects royalties from institutional photocopying of magazine articles, broadcasts of scripts, and sundry other bits and bobs...

Next Season's Japanese TV

The Japanese TV world moves fast; there are approximately 30 new series each season, of which perhaps a dozen will go out in prime time, and only a handful will comprise remakes or sequels to earlier shows. In order to help you guess what the storylines might be for as-yet unmade series like Hairdresser Detective, My Boyfriend is an Alien, Get Away From My Husband You Bitch, and who knows, perhaps Undertaker Cop, we offer this handy plot generator. Delete as applicable, or add your own...

Eva 2.0

A great night at the UK premiere of Evangelion 2.0 at the Glasgow Film Theatre yesterday. Emily Fussell from the BBFC was on hand to talk about rude words, dodgy imagery and imitable violence. The audience were on great form with a plethora of questions about censorship, and I found myself signing a bunch of copies of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, the Dorama Encyclopedia and even a few of my Highlanders.  As for Eva 2.0 itself, it met with a roaringly enthusiastic reception, as a full house...

Grown-Ups

Hiroyuki Yamaga was 22 years old when he became an anime director. The ink was still drying on his college degree when he was suddenly catapulted into the limelight, and sent off to make Royal Space Force, a vaguely defined science fiction epic about the race for the stars. There was also, somewhere in the pre-production meetings, a second vague assurance to the sponsors that there might be some merchandise tie-ins.

Yamaga doesn't admit to feeling out of his depth. He went in supremely...