Frederik L. Schodt is someone whose own scholarship is impeccable. So when he recommends a piece of work on manga history, it’s work checking out. Mattt’s video is an hour and a half of loving, dedicated and accurate research, conveyed with clarity and passion. “How manga broke the US comic industry” really impressed me. It […]
I’m delighted that the proceedings of the Lancaster symposium on transnational anime are now published as an issue of the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS), free to read here. There really is something for everyone here, from papers on the nitty-gritty of motion in anime and music in anime to the rise of […]
Although asked in the context of Miyazaki’s and Ghibli’s views on the primacy of the feature film, this question covers an issue that’s been debated in the anime business and anime scholarship for decades. It’s a really interesting question, because some people undeniably consider feature films superior to other forms of moving picture, but when […]
At the beginning of July I was privileged to speak at a symposium on Transnational Perspectives in Anime. It was held on the Lancaster University campus, co-hosted by Dr. Zoe Crombie and Japan Foundation London; I took part from my desktop. It was a truly fascinating day, sparking new ideas and new insights about the […]
62 years ago, in 1963, 35-year-old Osamu Tezuka flew to the USA to present his hit TV series Tetsuwan Atom to the NBC network. According to Tezuka Production’s history, a preview was screened in New York on 10 March, a contract signed in May, and the series began airing as Astro Boy on 7 September. […]
That’s an excellent question, not just because it impacts a key relationship in the film of Howl’s Moving Castle but because it also gives us an example of the contrast between relationships with an equal power balance and relationships where all power is given to one side. I’m not going to talk about this in terms […]
The Ghibli fans who come to my Seed Talks ask some really interesting questions. So I’ve started recalling as many of them as I can at the end of each session, and I plan to revisit my answers here in a series of news posts, with a bit more detail than I can give in […]
The great Isao Takahata, without whom the Hayao Miyazaki we know would not exist, was and remains an influential figure in Japanese animation. Finally, a book in English explores his work and gives a clear picture of how and why he is so highly regarded by directors and animators. Editors Rayna Denison, David Desser and […]
I get some absolutely fantastic questions from audiences for my Seed Talks on Studio Ghibli. They often raise points I hadn’t thought about before, or give me completely new angles on topics I’ve been over many times. Having let so many of these brilliant insights vanish down Memory Lane I thought I’d try and recall […]
Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation was published by Stone Bridge Press in 1999. It was the first book on Miyazaki in English and I had so much fun writing it. In 2026, over a quarter of a century later, McFarland & Company, Inc., will publish an updated edition covering Miyazaki’s 21st century works. That, […]