I’ve been debunking the Totoro-as-shinigami theory for years, most recently in my #SeedTalks all over the UK. It’s nice to have official Studio Ghibli confirmation, and see them emphasise the importance of the end credits to the continuing story (long before MCU did tagscenes.) Also, it’s good to have this cleared up officially before the […]
The new Miss Dior ad for the US market is one of the most powerful homages to anime since the Vuitton Superflat ad. Dior talks of its history and its links with French animation masters; I also see echoes of ‘Perfect Blue’ and the ‘Magnetic Rose’ segment in ‘Memories’. Influence of this depth takes years […]
Many thanks to Roland Kelts for gifting the link to this interesting Bloomberg piece on the future of Studio Ghibli. It’s paywalled, like all their content, but Ghibliophiles like us might consider it worth the subscription. It’s an interview with Goro Miyazaki and Ghibli’s new president and CEO Kenichi Yoda, in which they discuss the […]
This week I completed the edits on the updated new edition of my 1999 book on Hayao Miyazaki, and sent them back to McFarland’s editorial team. I still have to check the bibliography, but this means the book is almost ready to go to press. I’ll let you know the publication date as soon as […]
Producer Yoshi Ikezawa, head of co-production at Toei, told #Variety magazine in Cannes that a finished Toei co-production may not always wear its Japanese origins visibly — but the underlying grammar remains distinctly anime. “We believe that the anime aesthetic and the storytelling language of anime are already inherently Japanese.” When the mighty Toei Animation, […]
Happy New Book Birthday to me! The Manga Bible is in the shops today. Of course, I’ll celebrate – but very quietly. Cake, no alcohol, no rushing from bookshop to bookshop to admire its gorgeous cover on the shelf and maybe sneakily move it into a more visible position. I can’t go into town and […]
Among the many fascinating questions at my Seed Talks in the West Country was one about the influence of comic art on Studio Ghibli. I’d talked about Takahata’s lifelong passion for French culture and about the many and varied Western influences on Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind, but there’s a limit to how […]
My lovely PR team at Octopus shot some videos of me to promote The Manga Bible and I thought it might be fun to share them. This one is all about why the book came to be. Thanks to Matilda, director and cinematographer, and Keiron and Emma for support and great company during the shoot! […]
When OH and I travel for Seed Talks, we love to look for comic shops and other places that sell Japanese items. There are loads of places that sell the latest gacha toys and other current stuff, and that buy secondhand comics and toys for resale. There are not so many that buy tempting older […]
I hope everyone’s having a really good start to 2026 in spite of the political horrors around us. Even in an unstable world we can keep our creative energy going and get stuck into a project, old or new, while the year is still a notebook with lots of empty pages to play with. I […]