Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 35

Pretty Boy

It was one of the earliest anime ever made, a ten-minute short from 1939 in which a handsome young boy faced a giant robber with a pole-axe on Kyoto's Gojo bridge. Much to the giant's surprise, the boy defeats him, snatching his naginata from him and threatening him with it himself. The giant pleads for his life, and swears to serve the boy until his dying day.

Kenzo Masaoka's early anime talkie, featuring Masaoka himself as the oppressive giant Benkei, was based on the legend of Yoshitsune...

Catnip for Industry Wonks

Chad Kime, formerly of Geneon, is the special guest at Anime News Network's podcast this week. It doesn't take hosts Zac Bertschy and Justin Sevakis all that long to coaxe him into tell-all confessions of inventory, minimum guarantees, sales figures, returns, and honest-to-God numbers. Seriously, if you have any interest in the way the anime business actually works, if you really want to get a handle on the upheavals of the last five years, then put this week's episode on your MP3 player and ...

Project Mayhem

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Detective Yosuke Kobayashi is losing his mind. A malicious killer has been mailing him dismembered parts of his murdered girlfriend. The shock drives Yosuke over the edge – he tracks the criminal down and slays him himself. On trial for the revenge killing, his personality cracks up and he claims to be a psychological profiler called Kazuhiko Amamiya. Released after years in prison, the disgraced and still troubled man finds a job doing the only work he knows: as a freelance private eye...

Married to the Mob

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They'll eat her alive! New math teacher Kumiko (Yukie Nakama) has been assigned to class 3-D, the most notorious group of troublemakers in Shirokin Academy. They stare her down, they throw anything that comes to hand and they just plain ignore her. But Kumiko is tougher than she looks, and she isn't taking any crap from a gang of teenagers. She's used to dealing with gangs, after all – she's the heir to one of the biggest crime syndicates in Japan. This is no normal classroom drama, this is...

The Imperfect Storm

There was a time when the $17,000 budget for an episode of Getbackers was considered obscenely low. Now industry figures claim that allocations of anime budgets have sunk to a shocking $14,000. That's less than ten thousand pounds, divided among every sketch artist, colourist, animator and designer on an episode of TV anime. It means that there are some anime that cost less to make than this issue of NEO! Terrifyingly, it suggests that it can now cost more to dub certain anime into English...

The Embers of Black Flame

News arrives via David Bishop's blog that a number of novels in the old 2000ad line, including my own Strontium Dog: Ruthless, have suddenly appeared in Kindle editions.

Ruthless had a bizarre gestation. I'd written two Strontium Dog audio plays for Big Finish Productions. Featuring Simon Pegg (now better known as Scottie in Star Trek) as Johnny Alpha, they were critically acclaimed, albeit not stellar sellers, and eventually sold to the BBC Cult website, which offered them in the...

China Crisis?

To Wuhan in China's Hubei province, where prime minister Wen Jiabao had some words of complaint for animation students.

"Your work is meaningful. You should play a leading role in bringing Chinese culture to the world," he told students at Jiangtong Animation. "Let Chinese children watch more of their own history and own country's animation." But this was meant less in praise than in criticism. After spending time with a grandson we shall call Wen Junior, the prime minister was shocked to...

The Usual Suspects

(This article first appeared in NEO #33, 2007, and was subsequently reprinted in the book Schoolgirl Milky Crisis)

An attractive English teacher, apparently strangled by a student stalker, Lindsay Hawker was front-page news. As I write, Hawker's murderer is still at large, and her grief-stricken father proclaimed that the death had "shamed" Japan. Hawker's murder is heartbreaking and horrifying, but if Japan should feel ashamed, it is at the fact that a fugitive, barefoot homicide suspect...

Bad Luck

In New York for a meeting with Ari Messer, publicity guy for Stone Bridge Press. At least, that's the official excuse. Unofficially, I am here to drop in on the New York Met, whose exhibition on the Art of the Samurai features a whole bunch of old friends.

Well, I am not sure we would have been friends in real life, but after spending many months writing the Brief History of the Samurai, I feel I already know them. A suit of bright crimson armour with golden horns dominates the entranceway...

Pimpage

"Jonathan Clements is one of the rare commentators who writes for the English speaking anime enthusiast without resorting to supposition. .. Clements' work stands as an effective testament to the value of print commentary in anime. Personally, I couldn't be more pleased to have more of this work captured in a shelf-suitable bound edition." (Ain't It Cool News)

Tomorrow, this blog is a year old. It's been twelve whole months since the Big Giant Heads showed me the negatives, and assured me...