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
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