demographic: seinen

Never before available for English-speaking audiences, Gakuryū Ishii's raw and rousing micro-budget motorcycle mini-epic heralds what was to come in his future films

Ryū Murakami's adaptation of his own story about a Tokyo sex worker is noisome social commentary that won't reach anyone who hasn't already gotten the message

This labyrinthine noir about a third shift cabbie grows in unexpected directions, becoming one of the best anime offerings in a long time

Once thought lost, then found intact, this rapid-fire sendup of/homage to anime tropes is fitfully funny, but better in its pieces than across its whole

Critically maligned, a financial disaster, and dramatically murky -- but dazzling nonetheless, and as a milestone for how CGI functions as its own storytelling medium

Lopsided, but still very enjoyable; if this hasn't raised the upper bound for anime-to-live-action, it sure has raised the lower bound

Your standard cop-buddy story, made only slightly more interesting by having the buddy being a magic-wielding paladin

A scaled-down adaptation of Sōseki Natsume's dark comedy of human nature as seen through the eyes of a cat, but with all its cutting humor intact

Anyone curious about 'Lupin III' or Hayao Miyazaki's career, start here, as this is a grandly entertaining introduction to both at once

A functionally competent follow-up to the cult classic, but when your ancestor is a cult classic, you want more than just functional follow-up

This off-kilter 1981 comedy about a girl inheriting a crew of not-very-competent yakuza is an oddball masterwork that zags when you think it'll zig

A lavish adult fairytale, now restored in 4K, and featuring a mesmerizing performance by one of Japan's legendary onnagata

When so much cyberpunk dates badly, the futurology of the first 'Ghost In The Shell' TV series remains thrillingly relevant almost twenty years later

Akira Kurosawa's samurai revision of 'King Lear', among the very greatest films ever made, returns to glory in a new 4K remaster

One of the smash hit shows of the year that's both fun to watch and touches on deeper things without getting lost in the weeds

Kei Kumai's chilling film version of Shūsaku Endō's equally grim novel remains all but unseen outside of Japan, but deserves a wider audience despite its queasy subject of wartime culpability

Katsuhiro Otomo's anthology project dazzlingly animates three of his stories, showing more sides to the man most only know through 'AKIRA'

Calling it an anime 'Clash Of The Titans' falls far short; this staggeringly ambitious respinning of Greek mythic adventure is a must-see

A splashy but unmoving look at the last years of Osamu Dazai's dissolute life, with much screen time sensibly devoted to the women he manipulated on the way down

A deeply unappreciated David Lynch-esque jolter, from two major writers of anime live-action adaptations; a horror-feminist project that deserves reexamination with fresh eyes