Omohide.com

Eve no Jikan is a relatively short ONA series that was released between 2008 and 2009.  The story is divided into six acts, but the majority of them are only about 15 minutes long, and you can think of this as the equivalent to a two hour movie.  Eve no Jikan takes place is a futuristic setting (probably Japan, says the opening titles) where androids have become commonplace.  Our main character, Rikou, is a young high school student who possesses one of these androids at home and is constantly teased by his sister for being a potential…..

This two-part OAV (Saishu Heiki Kanojo: Another Love Song) was released in 2005 as a side story to complement the original 13-episode series.  It focuses more on the military environment and personnel associated with Chise’s role as a weapon, while not really give us any more background about the origin of Saikano’s plotline either.  As such, I

Before I get into the review, I want to mention that the tagline to this series, “The Last Love Song on this Little Planet”, is one of my favourites – I find it to be very evocative and expressive. How does the actual anime stack up? Well, Saikano was one of the first anime…

Ponyo is the most recent work of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and marks the end of my series of reviews on the works of Studio Ghibli.  Sometime soon, I may get around to doing some sort of summary post.  You may notice that there were no posts regarding Mimi o Sumaseba and Cat Returns, the reason is simply that I’ve already written reviews of those films in the past, a particularly long one for Mimi (which is a favourite of mine).  Ponyo alludes to….

Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) was a project which had been in Miyazaki’s mind since at least 1983, when he had written a manga called The Journey of Shuna. Though the plot and characterization in that manga were different from what would become Mononoke-hime, there are some obvious similarities between them. After completing Porco Rosso, Suzuki and Miyazaki had to decide what Miyazaki’s next project would be. Suzuki felt that a….

Though the Ghibli adaptation of Earthsea passed by Miyazaki’s hands (due to semi-retirement), he returned to his regular position at the studio soon enough, and the project was an adaptation of another Western novel, Howl’s Moving Castle.  Although the author of Gedo Senki wasn’t entirely pleased with the faithfulness that Goro showed to the original, I don’t know if Miyazaki’s hypothetical version would have pleased her either.  The……

The backstory to Gedo Senki is quite interesting.  The source of the material is a fairly popular series of fantasy books called Tales from Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin.  In Miyazaki’s younger days, prior to making his most accomplished works, he had sought the rights to make a film version of Earthsea, a request rejected by the author…..

You’ve heard of Spirited Away.  Everyone’s heard of Spirited Away. Released in 2001, Spirited Away soon overwhelmed the Japanese box office and became the highest grossing film of all time, defeated only by Miyazaki’s future films.  I try not to be too much of a Japanophile on this blog, but I can’t help but think that a country where a film like Spirited Away can break box office records is a country I’d like to be in.  Through the work of Miyazaki fanboy John Lasseter and

Rounding out the list of Takahata-directed Ghibli films is Pom Poko, an ecological fable starring the tanuki of the Tokyo forests.  Humans are encroaching on their territory and the tanuki must band together and find a way to stop them.  I am actually quite surprised that this was given the full DVD treatment by Disney, as it probably poses one of the greater challenges when it comes to localization.  For one thing….

If your only experience with Isao Takahata is his earlier films for Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies and Omohide Poroporo, My Neighbors the Yamadas(となりの山田くん), for better or for worse, will be a surprise. While those mentioned films were quiet, realistic, humanist dramas, the (at first glance) cartoonish nature of My Neighbors the Yamadas might be off-putting, despite a whiff of Takahata’s neorealist-influenced style.  Looks can be deceiving, of course, and while …