'No-No Boy': John Okada's First, Last, And Only July 8, 2019
The first major piece of fiction by an Asian-American originally vanished from sight, and seemed all but gone after the death of its author, but found new life in reissues across the decades
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'Giant Robo': The Mecha Opera January 10, 2020
This grand and glorious epic returns to home video for English speaking audiences in a spectacular new Blu-ray Disc edition; it is as essential as it gets
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Junji Ito's 'No Longer Human': No Longer Dazai December 23, 2019
A manga horror icon takes on a classic of modern Japanese literature, and makes it his own in ways both fascinating and baleful
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'Penguin Highway': Whiz Kid Vs. Cosmic Weirdness December 20, 2019
The author of the surreally absurd 'The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl' and 'The Tatami Galaxy' now turns to a story aimed at younger readers, but with the reality-warping and surrealism of his other work
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Gō Tanabe's 'At The Mountains Of Madness': Horror's Human And Inhuman Faces December 16, 2019
Gō Tanabe's two-volume adaptation of Lovecraft's classic novella shouldn't be missed by fans of that writer, by lovers of comic adaptations, or by those who want to see manga at its best
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'Millennium Actress': She Lost It At The Movies December 13, 2019
Satoshi Kon's mini-epic of one woman's journey in film across Japan's turbulent century starts with narrative games, but delves into the ultimate meaning of a person's life
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'Ryuko': International Woman Of Mystery November 18, 2019
A gorgeous homage to everything from Meiko Kaji's femme-violence films to 'Black Lagoon', but it's too top-heavy with plot and not resourceful enough about its own best ideas
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'Izo': Takashi Miike's Death (And Resurrection) Mantra November 11, 2019
Even longtime Takashi Miike fans were alienated by this mix of Miike's fetishes, 'Slaughterhouse-Five', and William S. Burroughs's space-age shamanism, but it deserves fresh eyes and open minds
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'Dream Fossil': How A Master Mimics Life November 8, 2019
Satoshi Kon's collection of short manga, from early in his career, show off all the sides he later brought to full fruition as an anime director
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'Genius Party / Genius Party Beyond': Visions Of Twelve October 28, 2019
These two anthology showcases of boundary-pushing animation are now at last enshrined on disc for English-speaking audiences, as they've always deserved to be
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'Rashōmon': The Post-Truth Condition October 7, 2019
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story, and Akira Kurosawa's movie, have endured to tell us something about the nature of truth in a time when we can hardly trust the words we hear in our own heads
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