“Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion is a delightful collection of fresh scholarship on all sorts of intriguing aspects of anime, as revealed through various angles to a famous and much-loved series, itself given a new lease of life and a new legion of fans thanks to Netflix. Published by Stockholm University Press, but organised out of the University of Vigo in Spain, it is a well-curated volume that will provide much food for thought for anime scholars and the more chin-strokey of fans.”

Over at All the Anime I review the second open-access anime publication from Stockholm University Press.

They say that Keiko Nobumoto was underrated in her lifetime, but the Anime Encyclopedia has credited her with writing “many of the better anime scripts of recent years” for the last decade.

Over at All the Anime, my obituary for the lead writer on Cowboy Bebop.

“So, if you’ve ever wondered why nobody goes to the toilet in sword-and-sorcery movies, why all alien queens fall simpering at the feet of dorks from Earth, or why no-one ever asks the Narnia kids how many pairs of pants they’ve packed, El Hazard is for you.”

Over at All the Anime, I’m singing the praises of the anime El Hazard, with an article that I originally wrote so long ago that it is one of the oldest legacy Word documents on my hard-drive, originally for either Anime UK or Anime FX way, way back when.

Japan’s sudden, speedy modernization after 1868 turned into a scramble for resources and influence on the Asian mainland. As foreign powers fought over the spoils of the dying Chinese empire, the Japanese became under-dogs, allies, and then rivals of the other imperial powers – first praised as the plucky ‘British of Asia’, then reviled as unwelcome upstarts and feared as savage foes.

Jonathan Clements chronicles the 80 pivotal years which set Japan on a course for world war, steered by a military clique that used assassination and coercion as political tools. He charts the evolution of a state dedicated to conquest, and the influence of military fanaticism on everything from Japanese culture to food and fashion – including the propaganda songs and anthems of a martial nation. He examines daily life in the Japanese Empire at its peak in 1940, and the grotesque colonial experiment of Manchukuo, a state funded by drug-dealing and supported by forced labor.

Looking beyond the polarized narrative of the Second World War, Clements examines the motivations and beliefs of Japan’s leaders, as well as policy decisions couched in terms of Pan-Asianism, the exclusion of the Japanese from immigration, and the effects of trade sanctions and embargos. A final chapter details the dismantling of the old order during the Allied Occupation, and its echoes in the present day.

Available now to pre-order.

Off to Glasgow today, ready for tomorrow’s big onstage interview with Mamoru Hosoda at the Glasgow Film Theatre. This will actually be the fourth time I interview Hosoda about his film, Belle. We’ve joked about the second time being a “disappointing sequel” after his revelations about Paw Patrol, but he decided to surprise me by talking about an anime called Gunbuster, which as some of you may be aware, I am a bit of a fan of, which made the second one even better, and then he started talking about the Rolling Stones, and the third one trumped the others. But if a series of interviews were the Star Wars films, this fourth outing will be our Phantom Menace, which would make me Jar-Jar Binks.

Time Travel Footnote: So this turned out to be the first ever Q&A I’ve been involved with to get a standing ovation, but that may have had more to do with Hosoda’s first footfall in the country being in Glasgow (“the Osaka of Scotland”) rather than That Fancy Edinburgh.

“England the bumptious gaijin transforms into a living culture clash, not only chronicling an excruciating catalogue of faux pas, but also the oddities of Japanese PR through foreign eyes – he is, for example, comically aghast at what passes for a “special event” in Japan, where fans are expected to shell out £100 for a ‘sneak preview’ and a jigsaw. In a world where Japanese production executives are notoriously thin-skinned about absolutely everything, I almost spat out my coffee imagining how one of them might react to the revelation that the bento boxes supplied by Toho apparently all ‘suck ass,’ even if England does put such a review in the mouth of an unidentifiable crewmember.”

Over at All the Anime, I review Norman England’s new memoir of life in the rubber-monster movie business.

“Evangelion had effectively broken the mold for prime-time TV, and there was a scramble to make some kind of follow-up that did something different,” Clements explains. “Cowboy Bebop went for a sci-fi future without giant robots” — again, defying the conventions of science fiction anime at the time.

Over at Entertainment Weekly, I am one of the talking heads in Tyler Aquilina’s introduction to the Cowboy Bebop anime and its long history with the American mainstream.

Up now on Noiser podcasts (for free!), A Short History of the Samurai, featuring that Paul McGann as the narrator, and that Jonathan Clements as the talking head. For those who want to know more, of course, there’s always my Brief History of the Samurai (which is £3.99 on the Kindle, so still a bargain).

I actually broke down for a bit while retelling the story of Dannoura, as I usually do, but they very discreetly snipped out me sobbing.

“Two years ago, in my review of Galbraith’s Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, I noted that the book finished with a series of slingshot ideas, as if Galbraith had more to say, but had to bow out for now as he approached the edge of his wordcount. His new work from Stockholm University Press seems to be the first of the ‘contingent articulations’” that he promised, continuing his adventures as anime and manga’s self-appointed Danger Man, perpetually poking at the hornets’ nest in search of anthropological understanding.”

Over at All the Anime, I review Patrick W. Galbraith’s newly published anthropology of bishojo games and gamers.