With Makoto Shinkai’s latest cinematic release, I come to the end of my 6-day anime movie marathon, courtesy of Scotland Loves Anime at the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen. This was a re-run of films first shown back in October at the 2019 festival in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Technically the showing of Weathering With You that I attended wasn’t part of the … Read more
Amongst anime fans, Masaaki Yuasa is a divisive director. For every fervent evangelist of Netflix’s gory, intense Devilman Crybaby, there’s a detractor who hates the tone and subject matter. For every fan who cites The Tatami Galaxy as an epistle from God that speaks directly to their heart, there’s another who shrugs “Meh, just wasn’t my thing.” I’m … Read more
My children have designed a disturbing new ratings scheme for anime films, based on whatever substance they think the director was abusing at the time of production. Of the films from this week’s Scotland Loves Anime season at the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen, these are their ratings so far: Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System: Caffeine. My daughter found this really boring … Read more
Towards the end of Children of the Sea, main character Ruka states “I didn’t even understand anything that happened at all.” She’s doing an excellent job as an audience stand-in. I went into this knowing very little of what it was about and afterwards left it none the wiser. Apart from feeling overwhelmed by the gorgeous … Read more
What a way to start a 6-day cinematic anime binge than with a 3-hour-plus orgy of sci-fi violence? Yes, Scotland Loves Anime came to my local cinema and although it technically started yesterday with Weathering With You, I’ll be catching a later showing of that next week. Today I watched all three Psycho-Pass: Sinners of … Read more
With the dawning of a brand new decade, it’s time to gaze back into 2019 with 2020 vision (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I paused at regular intervals last year to provide snapshots of each season and you can read them here: Winter 2019 (middle) (end), Spring 2019 (middle) (end), Summer 2019 (middle) (end), Autumn 2019 … Read more
Yes, you read that right. 2018. It took me over a year to put this dang list together, and I’m not letting all that work go to waste. I need to get this thing posted so I can focus on my 2019 list. I listened to a ton of new stuff in 2018, much more … Read more
This is a statement of intent. Up here in the frozen north of Scotland we only rarely get the chance to experience anime on the big screen. The nearest annual film festival is Scotland Loves Anime every October at the Glasgow Film Theatre and Edinburgh Filmhouse. Due to family illness I was unable to attend this year’s … Read more
No matter who you are, if you play video games there is a high probability that you have a stack of games that you haven’t even finished. I’m a sucker for a good deal, so any time a game I’m even remotely interested in is heavily discounted, I usually snap it up. I’m ashamed to … Read more
Decade In Review: AniTAY takes a retrospective on the decade with everything from our favourite moments to remembering how culture evolved. Depending on who you ask, anime in 2019 can be largely summarized in one word: Isekai. Whether you loved or hated the genre, the trapped in another world trope stuck around for a good … Read more