'In This Corner Of The World' gets its first U.S trailer; Discotek blesses us with the likes of 'Kaiba' and 'HELLS'; and start saving up for the new 'Gurren Lagann' box set
Project Itoh's 'Genocidal Organ' hits theaters next month; peek at the new 'Gintama' live-action trailer; and 'Kino's Journey' wanders back into print
'Ghost In The Shell' fizzled, but there are tons of other worthwhile anime/manga titles with strong female leads that could be adapted excellently for English-speaking audiences
A poor man's 'Cowboy Bebop'? Maybe an anime 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'; either way, 'Outlaw Star' has its share of pulp-space-opera-sitcom delights
Leiji Matsumoto brings his mythmaking style to the origin story of his legendary space pirate, a showcase for both the best and worst instincts in the man's storytelling style
Not what I was expecting, but I doubt many other people were, either: Cowboy Bebop, that now-classic noir/western romp in space, is being adapted into a live-action television series in the West, with the involvement of some of the original creative team. This has, as you might well already know or suspect, not gone down well in some circles. On my own end, I didn't react with horror and disgust, but guarded curiosity — the same emotion I try to cultivate whenever another project of this kind is announced. And the more I rummaged through my reactions, the more I saw many aspects of this project that work in its favor. From the perspective of sheer feasibility, there are many reasons to think it can be done well.
AKIRA was a gateway-drug manga and anime to many in my generation, those who entered anime in the latter half of the 1980s or the first half of the 1990s. The original manga is 35 years old this year, a fact only slightly less startling to me than Soundgarden now being considered "classic rock". But one of the people who isn't all that interested in an AKIRA anniversary is AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Ōtomo himself. And I empathize, in big part because of my own work as a creator, and not because of my own work as a critic or my experiences as a fan.
Wolf Guy. No, that is not a transliteration. The actual phonetic title of this film, and the manga it was derived from, is Wolf Guy. I admire the directness, the unpretentiousness of a title like Wolf Guy, as it tells you precisely what you're going to get: a story about a ... a wolf guy. Not a wolf man, a wolf guy. Especially when that guy is played by Japanese cinematic martial arts legend Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba, in one of the earlier examples on record of a live-action adaptation of a manga.
