My Transatlantic Aunty: The Podcast

Opening screen of The Aunty Sochelle Podcast features the podcast logo at top right, the text GUEST STAR: HELEN MCCARTHY in purple caps at bottom right, and a Megaera Amis portrait photo of Helen on the left, all on a black background. Helen has cropped blonde hair and wears glasses. Today her earrings are a pair of wings serpents in dark gold and you can just see the silver chain of her Tyrannosaurus skeleton necklace.

I had SO MUCH FUN it ought to be illegal – my first time on the Aunty Sochelle podcast! We talked about my forthcoming book The Manga Bible, the history of manga, fandom, and lots of other fun stuff. This is the blurb for the show, which I didn’t write and am therefore especially proud […]

Studio Ghibli Question Time: are anime feature films considered superior to anime TV series in Japan?

An image from Satoshi Kon's unfinished 5th feature film 'Dreaming Machine'. A young Japanese woman in a beige formal jacket and black open-necked shirt walks under an archway made of gold tubular metal and flanked by two brightly coloured 50s-style characters. A retro-style white house with red roofs is in the background, under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The image is slightly unsettling despite the blue sky and bright colours.

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 […]