Over twenty years ago, amidst the backdrop of a rural Japanese town, My Neighbor Totoro explored both the boundless imagination and the underlying fragility of childhood, setting the standard for the genre.  Mai Mai Shinko to Sennen no Mahou  (released as Mai Mai Miracle in English) takes many cues from that earlier work, but unlike so many clones before it, diverges from the established path to present something fresh and worthwhile while simultaneously feeling like a spiritual successor.  The influence of the former…

I have always felt a little self-conscious when discussing Makoto Shinkai ever since my first viewing of 5cm Per Second, a film which I had watched due to the constant praise heaped upon it by several like-minded acquaintances.  My impression of Shinkai after that film was that he was more of a visual artist than a storyteller – he could beautifully render a certain mood and present a snapshot of an emotion or feeling within a scene ,…

According to the Furusato Japan’s website, the WAO Corporation, which has funded the production film, describes itself as providing general education services across Japan.  This film, then, represents one of their areas of interest – making films with strong messages for audiences, particularly youth, across the country.  Furusato Japan is a film which tries to communicate the importance of maintaining traditions and culture, in this case, traditional children’s songs, by using a story of a school in…

After roughly a ten year gap, Hiroyuki Okiura, the man responsible for the critically well-recieved but generally little-known Jin-Roh, returns with Momo e no Tegami.  Though the film won’t be released even in Japan until 2012, a very early premier was, surprisingly, held at the Toronto International Film Festival (which I gleefully attended).  While Jin-Roh was a dark and adult character drama, Momo is a completely different kind of story, one that is friendly to all ages and treads…

Kokuriko-Zaka Kara (From Up on Poppy Hill) marks the second full-length film by Miyazaki’s son, Goro, after his first attempt, Earthsea (Gedo Senki), received only middling response from most Ghibli fans and critics alike.  Admittedly, the Ghibli fan response, including my own, was influenced in part by his father’s disapproval at Goro’s sudden rise to director status, something which was exploited fairly heavily by the media – who are always eager for a dramatic headline.  Although it is impossible to…

Dennou Coil is a near-future science fiction series which revolves around a group of children entrenched in the fad of their generation – special glasses which overlay a virtual reality onto the real world.  This technology, of course, serves a purpose in the infrastructure of the adult world, but for the children – at first, at least – it is a source of high-tech entertainment.  The havoc they cause is cleaned up by the authorities, who monitor…

The quirk of reviewing longer series is that their appeal so often depends on the slowly developed attachment they allow you to form with their characters and setting – something which is often hard to communicate in words, and is a direct result of the gentle pace that these series can afford.  Kemono no Souja Erin takes full advantage of its length of fifty episodes – it takes us though many years in the life of its protagonist,…

This short film of roughly 20 minutes was one of the entries in the JAniCA Animator Training Project, a competition aimed at developing younger talent from various animation companies.  Ojiisan no Lamp comes from Telecom Animation Film, headed by Takiguchi Teiichi, an animator who worked on such films as Whisper of the Heart and Piano no Mori.  Here, he gets to flex his storytelling skills by contributing both the screenplay and the…

Note: posts which contain episode numbers in the title may contain spoilers – read reviews instead for spoiler-free opinions.

Though the majority of this arc featured gentle development of Erin and her raising of Lilan, the end of episode 39 appears to signify that the show is ready to approach the resolution of the overarching plot.  The various threads of the story thus far – Erin, the Grand Duke, the Queen, Damiya, and…