By Paul Thomas Chapman

Every decade or so, some visionary artist in Japan (assisted by a horde of animators, background artists, and other technical staff) produces a film of astounding visual brilliance that still manages to split the fandom along partisan lines, resulting in endless quibbling over whether the story should take a backseat to the cinematography. Currently that film is Redline , but eight years ago, ...

By Joseph Luster

In the latest issue of Otaku USA (on stands now), we boldly leap into the second attempt to animate Yoshihiro Togashi's Hunter x Hunter manga. It may seem like an odd choice to start from scratch—especially for those who already blazed through Nippon Animation's 62-episode adaptation, which aired in Japan from 1999-2001—but Madhouse Studio's take on the material is something for the Dragon Bal...

By Brian Camp

Ocean Waves ( Umi ga Kikoeru , aka I Can Hear the Ocean ) is a made-for-TV animated movie from Studio Ghibli that was first shown on TV in Japan on May 5, 1993. It’s long been considered the “lost” Studio Ghibli film because it was never part of the package of Studio Ghibli films licensed to Disney in 1996 for worldwide distribution. When the Museum of Modern Art ran a then-“complete” retrospe...

By Paul Thomas Chapman

The Seventies were a simpler time, a time when being the undisputed martial arts champion of the world sometimes meant you had to karate chop a bull in the skull. It was a time when your whimsical walks on the beach were often interrupted by pink robots crashing into the surf and drilling things with the retractable drill guns they hide in their chest cavities, because that’s what pink robots ...

By Daryl Surat

Don’t get me wrong: I love the Golgo 13 television series. The episodes are quite faithful adaptations of their source material. But in a sense, they just might be a little TOO faithful. That source material consists of Japanese comic books created by an assembly line of uncredited and virtually-anonymous artists serving as cogs in the Saito Productions machine whose purpose is to guarantee th...

By Kristina Potts

Connoisseurs say the most succulent steaks are those with a balanced marbling of fat. Perhaps the same can be said of the original Dragon Ball Z compared to the leaner Dragon Ball Z Kai update of recent years. Some may appreciate having “the fat trimmed away,” but few can argue that the original form doesn’t offer a more well-rounded flavor. That’s precisely where the Dragon Ball Z Level 1.1 B...

By Brian Camp

The 14 th and 15 th Pokémon movies came to the U.S. in English-dubbed editions in December 2011 after attaining the second and third spots in the ranking of the year’s domestic box office hits in Japan (beaten only by Studio Ghibli’s latest, From Up on Poppy Hill ). Pokémon the Movie White: Victini and Zekrom was given single theatrical screenings at 388 theaters in the U.S. on the mornings of...