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anime (Page 249)
Kodomo Eiga Plus, an entertainment web portal that specializes in children’s films and children’s film events, asked 132 film industry pros which movies they’d recommend the most for children to watch before they turn 13. Unsurprisingly, Ghibli movies took the top three spots, as well as many positions on the Top 15.
Recently, we’ve brought you several articles detailing the meteoric rise of new franchise Youkai Watch as it continues to steal fans and attention away from the much-loved institution that is Pokémon. Die-hard Pokémon fans out there may feel safe in the assumption that Youkai Watch, being more traditionally “Japanese” in feel, will never match the success of Pokémon in the West. Be that as it may, we now have conclusive evidence that Pikachu’s time in the Japanese sun is well and truly over as new champion Jibanyan ascends his throne. Join us after the jump for proof!
The designers at the mail order fashion site SuperGroupies are at it again with some Magic Knight Rayearth short boots for the wet, wintry season.
Each design is modeled after one of the main heroines from Clamp’s manga and anime series. Hikaru Shidou, Fuu Hououji, and Umi Ryuuzaki are represented in their respective red, green, and blue colors. The pairs are now available for pre-order for 21,384 yen (about US$181) and are made from genuine leather.
I recently compared Attack on Titan to an 800-pound gorilla, since the smash hit anime has become so big and powerful it can do whatever it wants, such as actively forming partnerships with both Universal Studios and rival Marvel/Disney. But maybe the better analogy is to a cow.
Since the end of its broadcast run in September of 2013, the franchise has been spun off into side-story manga, novels, compilation movies, and live-action adaptations. For the most part, fans have happily lapped up the comparatively delicious offerings of all this milking, but what everyone has really been waiting for is some sort of timetable for a continuation of the anime TV series itself.
Thanks to its director, we finally have one.
The Meitetsu Department Store in Nagoya, Japan has a distinctive mannequin outside its men’s department. Nana-chan is a popular meeting spot because she’s easy to spot in the shopping district — she’s 20 feet tall. The staff change her outfits monthly, but recently she’s wearing an orange jumpsuit that fans of a certain ninja will recognize.
A bulk of the anime we know and love are set in real-life locations in Japan. Often, the stories are based on a specific location mentioned in the anime, such as Ikebukuro where popular anime Durarara! and its sequel are set. In other cases, the setting is not mentioned but fans are quick to identify the location using scenes found in each episode. One such example would be the hit franchise The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, which featured scenery from Nishinomiya in Hyogo Prefecture. Avid anime fans have had a long tradition of making pilgrimages to key spots in their favorite series through an activity known as Seichi Junrei. There’s now even a website dedicated to documenting these spots and they have recently released a ranking of the wards in Tokyo that contain the most number of pilgrimage spots.
If you only have a couple of days in Japan to go on a pilgrimage, this ranking should probably come in handy!
The musical style enka usually gets referred to as Japan’s equivalent of country western music. The two do have a lot in common thematically, as the biggest hits of both genres are often centered on blue-collar hardships, melancholy nostalgia, and heavy drinking (one famous enka hit is “Sake Wo,” or, “Bring Me Booze”).
But while there are young country listeners, it’s a lot harder to find fresh-faced enka fans, since the lyrics of many enka ballads are so world-weary it’s hard to appreciate them without a few decades of failed romances and stalled career paths under your belt. So to reach out to a new demographic, one enka legend is recording her version of the theme song of hit anime Evangelion.
It’s a big month for Attack on Titan. Between an art exhibit opening in Tokyo, a crossover with Marvel’s Avengers, and at least one of the naked giants finding a proper job, the biggest anime and manga hit of the last decade is even more in the spotlight than usual these days, which makes it only fitting that we’re getting our first in-costume glimpse of the cast of next summer’s live-action Attack on Titan movies.
Leading trio Eren, Mikasa, and Arumin are all present and accounted for. But while they’ll be joined by several new characters specially crafted for the films, one fan favorite apparently isn’t making the transition to live-action.
If you’re a gamer who’s too young to remember when Sega made consoles or having six buttons on a controller was a big deal, you might look back on 8-bit video game artwork and chuckle. With everything made out of blocky pixels, it’s impossible to create the sort of fine details that modern hardware easily renders to differentiate one character from another, isn’t it?
Maybe not, as one fan has put his old-school pixel art skills to use to recreate 50 different famous manga heroes, all in the style of the original Mega Man.
In 2013, perhaps the most famous of anime’s many spikey-haired protagonists,
Dragon Ball Z’s Goku, returned after a 17-year hiatus. While the film, subtitled Battle of Gods, didn’t really stray from the pattern of wacky hijinks and super-powered martial arts battles Dragon Ball Z had already established in its hundreds of TV episodes and dozen-plus movies, fans in general were happy and satisfied just to be able to spend an hour and a half with a group of old animated friends.
They’ll have the chance to do so again soon, and an ad for next year’s Dragon Ball Z movie shows that rejoining the cast of familiar heroes will be one of their most memorable foes.
In listening to people talk about anime director Hayao Miyazaki, there’s a collection of words you’ll hear over and over. Genius. Visionary. Legend.
So it was a little surprising to hear the man behind one of Japan’s most popular films from the last year instead voice his suspicions that Miyazaki isn’t quite right in the head.
Studio Ghibli’s films are known for being whimsical and beautiful to look at. But with all the action going on on-screen, it can sometimes be easy to take for granted the beautiful background drawings that provide the setting for each individual story. Today, we’d like to introduce you to one of Studio Ghibli’s most talented background artists, Naohisa Inoue, and take a look at the incredible methods behind his masterpieces.
Okay, so Youkai Watch is a cultural juggernaut in Japan these days, capturing kids’ hearts and enslaving them like so many collectible youkai monsters. But despite the brilliant marketing behind the franchise (how about something exactly like Pokémon… but with… traditional Japanese Youkai?! Genius!) we’ve often thought that the concept of using a common watch as a crux to base the whole thing on seems a bit, hmm, old-fashioned. Who even wears a wristwatch anymore, when we all have the time displayed on our various smartphones and other electronic devices? Well, it seems that the people pulling the strings have now decided to switch their merchandising focus from watches to tablets, taking inspiration from the “Youkai Pad” used by supporting character Whisper to call up information on various Youkai. (No, no, it’s nothing like a Pokédex. Honest.) The brand-new “Youkai Pad” is set for release early next year, and already fans have begun to slaver over it like hungry dogs at a barbecue.
Very few Japanese homes have installed carpeting. Older houses and apartments often have tatami reed mats, and in newer places you’ll usually find tile, wood, or rubberized flooring.
That’s not to say people in Japan can’t appreciate a nice bit of soft fuzziness between their toes, though. Even without permanent carpeting, many people will toss a carpeted mat on the floor to make their living or bedroom extra comfy, especially during the colder part of the year.
Of course, cold weather also means spending more time indoors, with extra time on your hands, and sometimes that patch of carpeting becomes a canvas for some seriously cool fan art.
For many newcomers to anime and manga, it can be hard to tell characters drawn by the same artist apart. In general, Japanese designs use fewer lines, especially in the faces, than those of Western comic books, and even some artists themselves, such as Touch creator Mitsuru Adachi, have been known to get their own cast members mixed up.
That’s not a problem with Atom, though. Also known as Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka’s beloved mighty robot is instantly recognizable, whether in the pages of the manga where he debuted, onscreen in one of his many anime adaptations, or, in his most recent appearance, a pedestrian walk signal in Kanagawa Prefecture.
There are a number of upsides to Sailor Moon Crystal, the recent reboot of the smash hit anime from the 1990s. Aside from benefitting from 20 years of advancement in animation technology and technique, the franchise’s proven record of success means that Crystal has a higher budget and sticks closer to creator Naoko Takeuchi’s manga than the previous adaptation did.
Still, a reboot is a reboot, and if you’ve already watched all 200 episodes of the original Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon Super S, and Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, then you’ve got a pretty big head start on many of the places Crystal’s plot is going. So if you’re the kind of person who snacks when you get bored, maybe some Sailor Moon tortilla chips will help you pass the time.
Every year for Halloween I carve a pumpkin for myself and for the trick-or-treaters to enjoy, usually based on a popular Hollywood movie with costume potential. To commemorate my post at RocketNews24, however, for this year’s jack-o’-lantern I chose my first ever anime theme! I went with one of my favorites from this fall’s line-up, Gugure! Kokkuri-san (繰繰れ！コックリさん), available on Crunchyroll.
Both heartwarming and twisted (for the non-anime-initiated), the series is an outrageously wacky, slice-of-life comedy adapted from a four-panel comic strip by Midori Endō. The large cast is led by Kokkuri-san and the young girl Kohina; the former is a motherly, lonely fox spirit (originally from Japanese folklore) with both human and animal forms, and the latter is a hardcore bocchi (loner) with a cup noodle addiction who claims to be an emotionless doll.
Read on to learn a little more about the show and the design process, as well as to get a nicer view of the lit-up pumpkin. There’s also a time lapse video that condenses 30 hours of carving into just over 11 minutes!
Fans of Japanese manga and American comics alike have spent the past few weeks wondering what exactly the upcoming crossover between Attack on Titan and Marvel has in store for us. Spider-Man and the Survey Corps exchanging tips over the best ways to zip around cityscapes? Deadpool and Levi fighting side by side with a combined four blades, as the merc cracks wise and the manga heartthrob sighs in annoyance?
Actually, we’re getting a fight between Earth’s mightiest heroes and anime’s tallest pantless woman, as Marvel has announced the project is titled Attack on Avengers.
Ukiyo-e Heroes are a group of artists who work in the medium of tradional Japanese woodblock printing (ukiyo-e), a style most strongly associated with Japanese culture. This group has turned their facebook page into a virtual gallery displaying their favorite muse: video games.
Dorayaki from 89-year-old Japanese confectionery shop is one of the best sweets hidden in Tokyo
War in Iran threatening Japan’s pudding production
What’s up with the “mosquito buzz” noise at Shibuya Station?
Sanrio amusement park in Tokyo to host Psycho Game horror event this summer[Video]
What are the worst things about living in the Japanese countryside?[Survey]
Japanese sweets souvenirs don’t get more beautiful than this
Looking for a new New Balance? Try these rare “Nyu” handmade sneakers from Japan
Finnish design brand Iittala partners with Pokémon for a golden first collaborative tableware set
Wisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Make-them-yourself Pokémon frappes arrive at Japanese convenience stores, can be mixed at home too
New Kyoto Converse sneakers celebrate Japan with traditional kimono fabrics for your feet
Japan’s 5.3 million beautiful Hitachi Nemophila flowers are now in full bloom[Photos]
Studio Ghibli launches huge new anime movie T-shirt collection with special design details
Tifa’s Final Fantasy VII bar is going to pop up in real-world Tokyo
Brand-new Square Enix Cafe to open in Tokyo…and in Los Angeles too!
Japanese convenience store gives away free ice cream with creative ad at Shinjuku Station
Japan is so hungry for workers it used up its five-year visa quota in record time
Tsujihan sushi bowl restaurant goes viral with foreign tourists, but is it worth the hype?
Hello Kitty is now a transforming truck robot[Photos]
7-Eleven Japan’s cooked-in-store takoyaki is here! How does it fare against the street food king?
Japan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visaJapan’s 5.3 million beautiful Hitachi Nemophila flowers are now in full bloom[Photos]
Pokémon and Ikea Japan cross over into each other’s worlds with collaboration eventsWisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Japan’s best conveyor belt sushi restaurant of seven years ago has now, finally, come to Tokyo
Brand-new Pokémon manhole covers coming to help the recovery of a disaster-stricken part of JapanNew Kyoto Converse sneakers celebrate Japan with traditional kimono fabrics for your feet
Japan’s awesomely beautiful Alpen Route snow corridor is now open
Injuries on stairs in Tokyo highlight an overlooked design flaw
Mt. Fuji decorated with a 500,000-flower pink carpet is Japan’s ultimate spring view
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency saysJapan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visa
Japanese sweets souvenirs don’t get more beautiful than this
Looking for a new New Balance? Try these rare “Nyu” handmade sneakers from Japan
Finnish design brand Iittala partners with Pokémon for a golden first collaborative tableware set
Wisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Make-them-yourself Pokémon frappes arrive at Japanese convenience stores, can be mixed at home too
Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth finds happiness in a canned cocktail[Video]
New heater-less pet kotatsu is a safe way to keep your furry friends warm this winter
South Korean design company turns subway maps into beautiful artwork you can hang on your wall
Brand-new Square Enix Cafe to open in Tokyo…and in Los Angeles too!
Burgers soaked in a plate of hot cheese served at American Diner Andra in Tokyo
The Tokyo bar where servers are princes, customers are princesses… and everyone’s a girl
Passing the JLPT N1 — Here’s how I did it, so you can too!
Family Mart opens first clothing store in Tokyo
