Make Me A Nerd: The Manga Bible on Mandy Kaplan’s Fab Podcast

Lobby card for the podcast has a partial portrait of Mandy Kaplan at far right, lower face hidden behind a book, and half length portrait of Helen, smiling broadly. She's wearing bronze winged serpent earrings, a miniature silver T-Rex skeleton necklace, and multicarat rings, with a spice yellow t-shirt.

The Manga Bible is out today in the US – the right time for me to give the fabulous Mandy Kaplan a crash dive into manga on her podcast Make Me A Nerd We talked One Piece, Nana and Nausicäa, amid many of my trademark diversions, and you can hear us on TruStory FM or […]

Studio Ghibli Question Time : The French Connection

A page from Arzach and the Space Jockey clearly shows its influence on Miyazaki. The desert landscape, blue sky and mode of transport are all clearly related to his work on Nausicä of the Valley of the Wind.

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 […]