A YouTube history of manga in America by Mattt

The opening screen of the YouTube video 'How manga broke the US comic industry' by Mattt. A black background with the title at top right, a circular pie chart in green and grey with small red and blue segments left of centre, and the Marvel and DC logos indicating their approximate current US market share.

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 …

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 …

Anime going global: the start of the process

The US version of Tetsuwan Atom replaces the Japanese title lettering with "Astro Boy" in a futuristic font

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, …