Anime and Manga Forum

GKIDS Partners with Anime Ltd. & Plaion Pictures, Plain Archive, Shout! Factory, and Sugoi Co for International Home Entertainment Release of ARCANE

First Season of the Emmy^® Award-Winning Series from Riot Games to be Released for Home Entertainment Platforms Worldwide in 2024

NEW YORK (July 9, 2024) – GKIDS, the Academy Award^®-winning producer and distributor of artist-driven and award-winning animation, announced partnerships with Anime Ltd. & Plaion Pictures, Plain Archive, Shout! Factory, and Sugoi, to release the first season of ARCANE, the globally beloved hit series from Riot Games, on digital download-to-own and physical home media in international markets in 2024.

ARCANE will be released on digital download-to-own and physical home entertainment in Europe, South Korea, and Australia/New Zealand by Anime Ltd. & Plaion Pictures, Plain Archive, and Sugoi respectively. It will be released on digital download-to-own platforms in Latin America by Shout! Factory, who will additionally handle physical product distribution for North America alongside GKIDS.

Earlier this month, out of the Annecy International Film Festival, GKIDS previously announced it had acquired worldwide (excluding China) videogram and digital transactional rights to the first season of the internationally acclaimed series.

Fans can look forward to a full product array to be announced soon, ranging from digital to premium editions, including a 4K version exclusive to the home entertainment release.

ARCANE is set in the universe of the massively popular video game League of Legends, made by Riot Games and Fortiche Productions for Netflix. The series is co-created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee, and follows the origins of iconic League champions Vi and Jinx, as they become caught in the power struggle between the utopian city of Piltover and the oppressed underground city of Zaun. 

The series debuted in November 2021 to rave reviews, garnering widespread praise for its striking animation, emotionally complicated characters, thrilling music, and overall production quality. It has been praised by critics as one of the best video game adaptations ever created. The series went on to win four primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Animated Program, as well as nine Annie Awards, including Best Mature Animated Television Broadcast Production.

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About GKIDS

GKIDS is the Academy Award-winning producer and distributor of artist-driven and award-winning animation from around the world. After an astounding 13 Best Animated Feature nominations, the company took home the Oscar in 2024 for Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s acclaimed feature, The Boy and the Heron. The company’s previous nominations include The Secret of Kells in 2010, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita in 2012, Ernest & Celestine in 2014, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea in 2015, Boy and the World and When Marnie Was There in 2016, My Life as a Zucchini in 2017, The Breadwinner in 2018, Mirai in 2019, Wolfwalkers in 2021, and The Boy and the Heron in 2024. For more than a decade, GKIDS’ influence on cinema has redefined the perception of animation as an artistic medium on par with live-action film through its stewardship of the Studio Ghibli catalog and by introducing American audiences to the critically-acclaimed films of other master filmmakers from around the world such as Mamoru Hosoda (Mirai, Belle), Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers), Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine), Makoto Shinkai (Weathering With You), Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner), Alberto Vázquez (Unicorn Wars) and Masaaki Yuasa (Inu-Oh, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl), among countless others. Also, GKIDS is the founder and host of ANIMATION IS FILM, the annual LA-based film festival which embraces the highest aspirations of animation as a cinematic art form, and is a vocal advocate for filmmakers who push the boundaries of the medium to its fullest range of artistic expressions. www.gkids.com

About Riot Games

Riot Games was founded in 2006 to develop, publish, and support the most player-focused games in the world. In 2009, Riot released its debut title, League of Legends , which has gone on to be one of the most-played PC games in the world. In the years that followed, Riot released V ALORANT , Teamfight Tactics , Legends of Runeterra , and League of Legends: Wild Rift . Riot’s titles have led to the creation of some of the most-watched and widely recognized esports in the world, culminating in events like the League of Legends World Championship and VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) , which are watched by millions of fans each year. Riot has also expanded its IP through multimedia projects across music, comic books, board games, and Arcane , its Emmy-winning animated series.

About Anime Ltd.

Founded in 2012, Glasgow-based Anime Limited is a subsidiary of PLAION PICTURES and represents Japanese animation interests in the UK, France, and beyond. With a thoughtfully curated lineup of films, series, and soundtracks, Anime Limited has earned its title of Europe’s favourite anime distributor. Whether through fan-centric cinema runs, beautifully packaged collector’s editions, or sharing the best of anime music on vinyl, We offer bespoke experiences for all fans for titles such as Attack on Titan, BELLE, Cowboy Bebop, JUJUTSU KAISEN, Neon Genesis Evangelion, One Piece Film: RED, Spy x Family CODE: White, Your Name, and Weathering with You.

About Plaion Pictures

PLAION PICTURES is one of Europe’s leading independent film labels with headquarters just at the gates of Munich. We offer tailor-made marketing solutions for films and series on all channels, from cinema to TV and home entertainment to innovative digital offers.
Our goal is to entertain people with exciting, moving or humorous content – anytime and anywhere. Our unique and wide-ranging portfolio also includes a large number of renowned art house productions, numerous successful and award-winning theatrical releases and a library of over 1,600 titles. Moreover, movie fans also appreciate our high-quality special editions, which turn classics into new film experiences.
Plaion is headquartered in Planegg near Munich and has branches in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Australia, the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. For more information, visit www.plaion.com

About Plain Archive

Plain Archive was founded in 2013 as an independent publisher of physical media. In 2016, Plain Archive released Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy in Blu-ray, featuring its first original documentary film Old Days. In 2019, the official screenplay and storyboard of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite was published, becoming an instant bestseller. Plain Archive has worked with exceptional Korean filmmakers, as well as other internationally renowned directors such as Kore-eda Hirokazu, Jim Jarmusch, Denis Villeneuve, and Kogonada to craft compelling home video releases and books. www.plainarchive.com

About Shout! Studios

Shout! Studios is a multiplatform media company specializing in film and TV distribution, development, and production. The company has evolved with the changing entertainment landscape to excel in all forms of content distribution, including theatrical, digital streaming, broadcast and in-flight licensing, physical media, and more. Shout! Studios owns and manages a large portfolio of feature films, series, animation, and documentaries. The company’s creative acquisition mandate has established it as a leading independent distributor, with partners and properties including Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun The Sheep), GKIDS and Studio Ghibli (including the latest Academy Award® -winning masterpiece from Miyazaki, The Boy And The Heron), LAIKA Studios (Coraline, ParaNorman), as well as Mystery Science Theater 3000 (in partnership with creator Joel Hodgson), alongside many others. Shout! Kids focuses on live-action and animated kids and family properties plus anime, and the company releases genre and horror films and television shows under the Scream Factory imprint. Shout! Studios also operates the acclaimed streaming service Shout! TV and its family of FAST channels. The company produces, acquires, and distributes new films, including Shout! Studios’ original Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson), Linoleum (Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn), What’s Love Got To Do With It (Lily James, Emma Thompson, Shazad Latif), The Kill Room (Uma Thurman, Joe Manganiello, Samuel L. Jackson), Drugstore June (Esther Povitsky), and the Viggo Mortensen-directed western The Dead Don’t Hurt (Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen). Shout! Studios is based in Los Angeles, California. For more on Shout! Studios, visit ShoutStudios.com

About Sugoi Co

Sugoi Co is a leading distributor of high-quality animation film in Australia and New Zealand and is dedicated to bringing content to fans in the most engaging and exciting ways possible. Led by Tim Anderson, co-founder and former CEO of Madman Entertainment, our team brings a wealth of industry knowledge and a deep understanding of the Australian entertainment distribution landscape. Sugoi Co has recently released “The First Slam Dunk” and “Godzilla Minus One” in Australia and continues to flex its skills in licensing, distribution, and merchandising of quality content and licensed properties.

Press Contact:
42West for GKIDS
LA: 310-477-4442 | NY: 212-277-7555
GKIDS@42West.net

Anime Limited presents the home video release of the classic Macross title in an unmissable Blu-ray Ultimate Edition – pre-orders open June 6th!

GLASGOW, MAY 25TH 2024 –  Anime Limited, under license from BIGWEST, are thrilled to reveal their plans for the release of the Macross Plus Ultimate Edition, bringing this classic show to Blu Ray in English-speaking territories for the first time outside of Japan. 

In a landmark moment for fans of the decades-spanning legendary Macross franchise, the beloved classic 1995 film – together with its original four-part OVA presentation – will be made available for fans for the first time in English on Blu-ray. Created by BIGWEST and Studio Nue, with Shoji Kawamori (Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Escaflowne) serving as executive director, the film marks the directorial debut of Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo) as co-director and the first collaboration with inimitable composer Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne). 

In keeping with the significance of this release, Anime Limited are giving Macross Plus their trademark Ultimate Edition treatment, with a luxurious and high quality release that will be the centrepiece of any discerning anime fan’s collection.

This Ultimate Edition comes packaged in a large rigid slipcase adorned with the title’s most iconic visuals, within which is contained an immense and comprehensive hardback book chronicling the history, production and creative efforts behind Macross Plus – from interviews with its creators through to character designs, background and key animation artwork, this is the world of Macross Plus as you’ve never seen it before.

Also included with the set is a series of nine art cards celebrating all of the title’s key visuals, plus an A4 “concert promotion” poster serving as an homage to virtual pop idol Sharon Apple.

This attention to detail also extends to the contents of the discs themselves – as well as containing both the movie and OVA versions of Macross Plus, an anime praised as a “visual tour de force” by Forbes, these discs also contain a wealth of options and bonus content to allow fans to fully explore the title. Features on the disc includes the full Bandai Visual dub for the OVA version of the show, as well as the Manga Entertainment dub of OVA #4, while both Neil Nadelman’s Manga Entertainment subtitles and Bandai Visual’s subtitle options are present for the Movie Edition. With a host of other extras including an interview with Shoji Kawamori and Special Visual Effects Director Ichiro Itano, this is the ultimate Macross Plus viewing experience for new and old fans alike.

In North America, the Macross Plus Ultimate Edition will be available exclusively via the Crunchyroll Store , while UK customers will be able to purchase the product exclusively from the AllTheAnime.com storefront. Pre-orders for the release will open on Thursday, June 6th at 5PM BST / 12PM EST / 9AM PST. In France, customers will be able to purchase an exclusive Macross Plus Ultimate Edition French version limited to 100 units through our AllTheAnime.fr online shop, with pre-orders opening at the same time.

Additional editions of Macross Plus will also be available for France and other European territories to follow, with more details to be confirmed later in the year.

About MACROSS PLUS

In the year 2040, on the distant planet Eden, former childhood friends Isamu Dyson and Guld Goa Bowman find themselves pitted against each other as test pilots of rival teams in a competition to decide the next generation of variable mecha fighters. The two must also deal with their own unresolved history with mutual love interest, Myung Fang Lone, who has returned as the manager of Sharon Apple, the AI pop star (virturoid) and the galaxy’s biggest singing sensation.

When Sharon’s advanced artificial intelligence gains consciousness, Isamu, Myung, and Guld must face their turbulent past and come together as Sharon Apple becomes self-aware and takes control of the Macross battlefortress itself!

About BIGWEST

BIGWEST CO., LTD., are representative owners of the Macross franchise. BIGWEST also provides planning and production for animation, as well as concerts, events, TV programs, etc., and manages related licenses and copyrights. 

For more Macross information, visit: 

Website www.macross.jp (Japanese only) 

X https://x.com/MACROSS_BIGWEST  

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MacrossBigwestOfficial/ 

YouTube [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKeM8HXpwR0qc0RtH0GKyMg[/youtube] 

About Anime Ltd

Founded by Andrew Partridge and Cedric Littardi in 2012, Glasgow-based Anime Limited is PLAION PICTURES’ Japanese animation arm in the UK, France, and beyond. With a thoughtfully curated lineup of films, series, and soundtracks, Anime Limited has earned its title of Europe’s favourite anime distributor. Whether through fan-centric cinema runs, beautifully packaged collector’s editions, or sharing the best of anime music on vinyl, Anime Limited offers bespoke experiences for all fans for titles such as Attack on Titan, BELLE, Cowboy Bebop, JUJUTSU KAISEN, Neon Genesis Evangelion, One Piece Film: RED, Your Name, and Weathering with You.

Although only the most recent three weeks of posts are visible on this blog’s front page, you can navigate through the previous nine years of articles using the tags. Click on these links to find our world-class obituaries and book reviews , or coverage of Japan and China . You can read the Hugo award-winning Jeannette Ng on Japanese popular culture,  the Harvey award-winning Helen McCarthy on anime and live events, Jeremy Clarke , Tom Wilmot and Jasper Sharp on Japanese live-action film, and Tom Smith on Japanese music.

The writers for the All the Anime blog have included authors like Andrew Osmond , academics like Zoe Crombie , and punditry from the likes of Hugh David , Andy Hanley , Shelley Pallis and Meghan Ellis . Motoko Tamamuro has poked around the world of untranslated Japanese books and Chris Perkins has rounded up the years in streaming.

Thanks to them, and to the many guest contributors who have enriched this blog over the last nine years, to the tune of over a thousand articles, and thanks to Anime Limited for supporting it for so long.

Jonathan Clements (Features Editor, 2015-2024)

By Andrew Osmond.

Many readers of this blog will know what a dating sim is. It’s a computer game where your character develops a romantic relationship with someone else, often one of multiple “possible” characters.

Actually, the definition’s more contentious than that. That above description could apply to many Visual Novels where relationships are important in the branching story, including epics like Fate/stay night and Steins;Gate. But you’ll find people claiming online that dating sims are not Visual Novels. Rather, dating sims should be seen as a different kind of game, often focused on saying the right thing to the right person at the right time, where you’re scored according to how well or badly your relationships are going.

Leaving Visual Novels aside, dating sims are a blurry continuum. Some action RPGs include dating sim elements, including the Persona and Sakura Wars series. But one obvious way to classify dating sims is to separate them into the ones where you’re a guy, and those where you’re a girl. Dating sims where a girl woos guys are called “otome” (maiden) games, and they range from the fantastical Alice in the Country of Hearts to the historical Hakuoki, which were both adapted as anime.

One of the jokes in Trapped in a Dating Sim is that its hapless hero finds himself in an “otome” game and ends up making it a boy-dates-girls game instead. That’s absolutely not what he intended, though; he wanted as little to do with dating sims as possible. At first he’s unnamed (which is how many game characters start out until their players name them). We join him when he’s playing what he thinks is a chronically horrible otome game. He’s only grinding through it because he’s been blackmailed by his younger sister. (What his sister has on him is a mystery, but it must be something really sordid.)

So our hero hate-plays the game’s intrepid girl protagonist, in a posh school full of cute guys who love her, mean girls who hate her, and endless rounds of tea parties. More incongruously, there are monster-filled dungeons, and flying motorbikes, and battles with big robots. The “rationale” is this is a game by a studio that usually caters to male audiences, bunging in what it knows, and bother the worldbuilding. Finally, after days of this drivel – the difficulty level is mercilessly high – the player finishes the stupid game. He gets up, walks outside… and is so exhausted that he tumbles down his apartment steps, apparently lethally.

Of course, he finds himself in the game he hated so much, incoherent worldbuilding and all. You’d expect he’d be one of the main characters, but instead he finds that he’s become a background extra, a generic nobody. In RPG terms, he’s a common or garden “mob ”; the anime’s official subtitle is “The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs.” It’s only at this point that he’s given a name – he’s Leon Fou Bartfort, son of a minor baronet who wasn’t even in the game.

Which suits Leon fine. He’s delighted to stay in the margins of a story he loathed, like a Tolkien-hater hiding as the sixth nameless hobbit on the left. Fate, though, drags Leon into the plot through amusingly daft contrivances. First, he’s threatened with marriage to a rapacious aristo – this is a matriarchal society. To avoid that, Leon goes on a treasure hunt and ends up finding an ancient A.I. who becomes his secret confidant – we told you the worldbuilding was random. Leon’s plan is to find a low-ranking wife at the school in the game and then live quietly ever after. Only his treasure-hunting success bumps up his status to a Baron, forcing him to court the high-ranking ladies at the heart of the game…

As you may have gathered, this isn’t a power-fantasy; it’s a farce about a supposedly predictable situation spinning out of the main character’s control. Things are out of whack as soon as Leon enters the academy. The “protagonist” girl (Olivia) is around, but she’s not the protagonist anymore; another girl seems to have stolen her script and story. For all his cynicism, Leon can’t help feeling sorry for the desolate Olivia, and also for Angelica, the game’s designated “villainess” who’s outraged at her betrothed prince dallying with a stranger. Before long, Leon’s planned quiet life is forgotten as he’s fighting monsters, duelling in mecha, and relishing being the school pariah, not noticing how much he’s disrupting events. But as he causes characters around him to break character and grow beyond their scripts, will he learn to grow himself?

The show is based on a light novel by Yomu Mishima (like many successful LN series, it also spawned a manga). Given the “reincarnation” device is a staple of Japan’s portal fantasies, it’s no surprise that Trapped in a Dating Sim originated on the Shosetsuka ni Naro website , where tons of these stories began. Some fans have complained the series feels nothing like playing a dating sim, but that surely broadens its audience. Apart from the ludicrous anti-worldbuilding, where you go from a school to a flying island to a gleaming spaceship in moments, the main gag seems to be how a character’s blunders can mess up a predictable romance story – not so different from Shrek. Then there’s the mystery of the strange girl who’s stolen the part of the otome protagonist. In fan terms, she’s trying to Mary Sue a Mary Sue.

Reportedly, “otome game” stories are trending massively in Light Novels and manga at the moment. As of writing, there’s an anime serial of Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke’s Mansion, from a South Korean novel and manhwa. It’s not about an otome game, but it’s another story of a character (female) who reincarnates to rewrite a story from the inside, where romance mingles with murder. And then, of course, there’s the anime adaptation I’m in Love with the Villainess, whose reincarnated office lady sets out to turn a “straight” otome story into the yuri romance of her dreams.

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films . Trapped in a Dating Sim is released in the UK by Crunchyroll.

By Andrew Osmond.

Rent-a-Girlfriend is a risqué romcom about a young man going online and… It’s as the title says. College student Kazuya is smarting after he’s dumped. That’s when he finds a website offering rental girlfriends. (“For just 5,000 yen per hour,” says the site, which was about £35 when the series was broadcast in 2020, and about £27 as of writing). As to whether rental girlfriends are anime fantasies like alien girlfriends, or whether they’re really a thing in Japan… We’ll get to that later.

Soon Kazuya is sitting in a café with a gorgeously beautiful, smiling girl. The script constantly reminds us that she’s absurdly out of his league. At the end of the date, she briefly holds his hand, and Kazuya lets himself think she liked him. Then he goes on a discussion board and finds, surprise, that’s how she treats all her customers.

Smarting again, Kazuya gives the girl a one-star review, but it’s not enough. He orders another date so he can tell the girl, called Chizuru, how he feels in person. On the day, she’s impeccably bright and friendly again… till they go to an aquarium (the archetypal date spot for Japanese youngsters), and he starts yelling at her. She drags him into a back room, breaks character, and explodes at him in turn. It’s wonderfully uncomfortable and fascinating on a human level, silly cartoon expressions and all.

Then we get the first of the story’s ludicrous twists. While they’re arguing, Kazuya gets a call telling him his grandmother, who’s dear to him, has been taken to hospital. He rushes to see her and Chizuru follows because, well, she’s a pro and still on the clock as his date. On seeing Chizuru, the grandmother naturally asks who this strange girl is, and Kazuya stammers she’s his girlfriend. Pandemonium follows, as Kazuya’s relatives had given up on the boy continuing the family line.

In a pile-on of wouldn’t-you-knows, it turns out Chizuru’s not just a student at Kazuya’s college, but she lives next door to him too! At least Chizuru has Clark Kent syndrome; that is, she looks so dowdy and studious in her normal life that none of the supporting characters recognise her as the goddess on Kazuya’s arm. Oh, and Kazuya’s ex, called Mami, is still around, reacting oddly to the news that he’s got a beautiful new girlfriend. It’s great fun seeing Chizuru and Kazuya being roped together ever tighter. And then more girls pile on in…

Rent-a-Girlfriend started as a manga in 2017, written and drawn by Reiji Miyajima, and serialised in Weekly Shonen Magazine. It’s still running as of writing, coming up to 35 collected volumes, and spawning not just this anime but a live-action series on Japanese TV in 2022. Notably, Miyajima said in an online interview that he was influenced by a news story that wasn’t about Japan – rather, it was a story about China. It was about “parents who pressure their sons to bring a girlfriend home for Chinese New Year, so they rent a girlfriend to introduce to their parents. It sounds quite silly, but I felt it was also endearing.”

There seems no reason to think rental girlfriends don’t exist in Japan. Indeed, it’s easy to find Japanese-language sites which will purportedly put you in touch with them, or YouTube videos that ostensibly show the “service” in action. It’s debatable if rental girlfriends are any less strange, or more sinister, than maid cafes or hostess clubs. Both of those undeniably exist, and both are businesses which let male customers pay to share the company of young women who wouldn’t glance at them in real life.

However, it’s worth adding a postscript to this, about the much wider claims have been made in recent years. Namely, that “rental girlfriends” are the tip of a far more extraordinary Japanese culture. In April 2018, the New Yorker ran an article , nearly ten thousand words, about what it called Japan’s “rent-a-family” industry. Written by Elif Bautman, the article claimed that “rental” actors are used for everything from giving a lonely widower a family meal to staging expensive weddings for marriage-mad parents.

The article appears to have been the inspiration for a docu-drama film about the same subject in 2020, called Family Romance LLC and directed by the esteemed Werner Herzog. In less elevated mode, the article was also the likely inspiration for a comedy spot by the American talk-show host Conan O’Brien.

I have a personal interest, as I wrote a piece for this blog about the New Yorker article, pointing up some credibility questions raised by my Japanese friends. Since then, my friends turned out to be on the money. In 2020, the New Yorker admitted several elements in its article were fabricated by the Japanese interviewees. For anyone interested, there’s an excellent summing-up of the debacle on the New Republic website by Ryu Spaeth, entitled “How The New Yorker Fell Into The ‘Weird Japan’ Trap.” I still find the New Yorker piece bracing, but as fiction; someone should make an anime of it.

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films . Rent-a-Girlfriend is released in the UK by Anime Limited.

By Andrew Osmond.

One way you could pitch the anime series We Rent Tsukumogami would be to describe it as Miss Hokusai meets Bagpuss. Bagpuss, if you’re too young to remember it, was a vintage British animation about a shop that collects lost objects, dolls, carvings and the like, which come alive and talk among themselves. We Rent Tsukumogami has a similar idea, except that its focus shifts between the talking objects and their human neighbours, who live in Edo, the city that’ll one day be Tokyo.

Edo has been shown in many period anime , but Tsukomogami feels particularly close to the Miss Hokusai film. Both anime have loose overarching stories, but they’re more concerned with conveying the rhythms of daily life. Indeed, the “slice of life” tag that’s often used by anime fans fits here. Both anime mix in the supernatural with daily period detail, and share Edo landmarks – for example, the red-light district of Yoshiwara and the curving wooden Ryogoku bridge, as painted by Hokusai.

However, We Rent Tsukumogami is the more gentle, humorous anime of the two. The “We” of the title refers to Oko and Seiji, the young human owners of an Edo lending shop called Izumo-ya. As the series explains, Edo’s houses are vulnerable to fires, so all but the richest inhabitants prefer to rent objects for a small fee, rather than own them. Oko and Seiji are siblings, though it’s soon established they’re not blood-related – the girl Oko was fostered by Seiji’s family following one such fire. Now their shop contains a great many objects, and some are actually “tsukumogami.”

In Japan a tsukumogami is an object that has gained its own spirit. You can see it as an extension of Japan’s age-old animist traditions, but it’s also how a child anywhere can see a beloved object – look at Toy Story, or indeed Bagpuss. (In anime, the short film Pigtails showed a girl surrounded by talking clothes-pegs and toothbrushes.) In the shop owned by Oko and Seiji, there’s a small cluster of tsukumogami, which includes a chatty comb; a princess doll; a full moon (with legs) from a hanging scroll picture; a pipe (kiseru); and a carved bat, who’s the noisiest of the bunch

The anime has an especially interesting take on the relationship between spirits and humans. As is common in these kinds of stories, the tsukumogami try to avoid being noticed by the humans, and most of the humans don’t notice them. However, Oko and Seiji are perfectly aware of their non-human neighbours, and can hear all their gossip. They avoid direct communication with the tsukumogami, but they still make use of them. For example, they can loan one of the tsukumogami out to someone, wait till its return, and then listen to the spirit gossip about what it’s seen and heard.

Many of the episodes revolve around small questions and mysteries – for example, looking for a precious object that’s been lost, or investigating someone’s agenda. One of the funniest episodes, part two, involves Japanese scrolls. Their owner is baffled that they’re starting to show weird mixes of characters from literature and folklore. That’s because the characters in the different pictures are becoming tsukomagami at night, getting into scraps, and then ending up in the wrong scrolls when morning comes. You may guess the story’s punchline if you know your Ghibli films.

The “regular” tsukumogami characters each have childlike quirks a la Bagpuss. The comb is skittish and garrulous, the moon character’s full of refined self-importance, the bat is grumpy but a softy, and so on. As for the human characters, they’re more slow to know, with the obvious question being what exactly is the deal between the official-siblings Oko and Seiji. More of their backstory is gradually divulged, while we see Oko and Seiji getting to know their human neighbours as we get to know them. Supporting characters in one story often come back in another, so try keeping track of who’s who.

The series was inspired by two Japanese books by Megumi Hatakenaka, and was broadcast on NHK General TV – NHK is Japan’s public broadcaster, and the series has rather more educational value than most anime, reminding viewers of the practices and implements of the Edo era. The anime’s director is Masahiko Murata, who doesn’t always direct such gentle fare; he helmed the grisly action series Shikabane Hime (Corpse Princess). He’s now directing the anime of To Your Eternity, the centuries-spanning manga saga by Silent Voice author Yoshitoki Oima.

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films. We Rent Tsukumogami is streaming now on Crunchyroll .

By Andrew Osmond.

My Next Life as a Villainess is one of those handy anime titles that effectively tells you the story. It opens with a hugely spoiled aristocratic little girl called Catarina being introduced to a potential future husband, a prince no less. They’re strolling around the gardens outside the family mansion when Catarina trips on a loose paving stone, bashes her head very hard… and is shocked when a lifetime of memories pours into her. Before she was Catarina, she was a Japanese girl in “our” world, who died in that standby of anime reincarnations, a road accident.

But that’s only half of the shock. In her previous life, the girl adored “dating” videogames, playing through them avidly. In particular, she played a game called Fortune Lover, set in a magic school, where the player controls a shy young girl who can form relationships with various gorgeous boys. The course of the story depends on which boy she picks. But in multiple branching scenes, the player is opposed by a dastardly, ruthless rival girl… called Catarina.

You’ve got the picture. Our protagonist has been reborn in the world of the dating game she played, only now she seems doomed to be the baddie. Even worse, all Catarnia’s storylines in the game end terribly, with death or exile. And yet, Catarina has a trump card that might save her. She’s still a child – the story in the game hasn’t started yet. Armed with her foreknowledge, can she rewrite her way to a happier end?

Many readers of this blog will know about dating videogames, sometimes called dating sims. It’s a kind of computer game, especially big in Japan, where your character develops a romantic relationship with someone else, often one of multiple “possible” characters.

Actually, the definition’s more contentious than that. The above description could apply to many Visual Novels where relationships are important in the branching story, including epics like Fate/stay night and Steins;Gate. But you’ll find people claiming online that dating sims are not Visual Novels. Rather, dating sims should be seen as a different kind of game, often focused on saying the right thing to the right person at the right time, where you’re scored according to how well or badly your relationships are going.

Visual Novels aside, dating sims are a blurry continuum. Some action RPGs include dating sim elements, including the Persona and Sakura Wars series. But one obvious way to classify dating sims is to separate them into the ones where you’re a guy, and those where you’re a girl. Dating sims where a girl woos guys are called “otome” (maiden) games, and they range from the fantastical Alice in the Country of Hearts to the historical Hakuoki, both adapted as anime.

In My Next Life as a Villainess, (based on the book ) Catarina recognises the boys who’ll be part of the game. Of course, they’re not meant to fall in love with her, but with the game’s virtuous heroine, Maria Campbell, who isn’t on the scene yet. But Catarina can meet with the boys instead – they’re still kids like her – and ring changes on the story. For instance, she has an adopted brother called Kevin, who the game says will spend his childhood locked in his room. But that won’t happen if Catarina cuts through the door with a whopping big axe… (If only Anna had thought of freeing her sister like that in Disney’s Frozen.)

The opening episodes focus on Catarina’s interactions with Kevin and the other boys. There’s Geordo, the prince mentioned at the beginning, who becomes engaged to Catarina after her accident in recompense for not catching her. Then there’s Geordo’s brother Alan, as well as the more enigmatic Nicol. Catarina meets them all, having an impact on each that she’s pretty oblivious about, as she has other priorities. For example, she becomes obsessed with farming, on the basis that if she ends up exiled, at least she’ll have a way to support herself! She holds regular strategy sessions in her own head, humorously presented as debates with multiple Catarinas.

After a few episodes, a time-skip takes us to the start of the game proper. Now a teen, Catarina must enrol at the elegant magic school, meeting several more characters including her “rival” Maria Campbell. (Maria’s voiced in Japanese by Saori Hayami, Shoko in A Silent Voice and Yor in Spy x Family; Catarina herself is voiced perkily by Maaya Uchida, whose other fantasy roles include Lilliluka in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeron?) But in this already changed world, Maria and Catarina aren’t rivals any more. Indeed, one of the show’s gags is that Catarina finds herself “stealing” scenes from the game that were meant for the boys, like chasing off a crowd of bullies.

We’ll have to wait and see if the show will be open about changing a “girl meets boy” game into a girls’ love story instead. Plainly, that’s not crossed Catarina’s mind; when she checks who her friends like and three girls express their deep fondness for her, she just thinks that’s not the right kind of “like.”) An anime comedy like Trapped in a Dating Sim, with a similar premise but a male protagonist, could easily change a girl-meets-boys scenario into a boy-meets-girls one instead. But anime’s still conservative when it comes to same-sex love.

Later in the story, there’s a big reveal about one of the characters, and it might not be the character you expect. Meanwhile, magic school adventures come more to the fore, with dungeon-crawling, magic books and a hidden enemy.

Given that the “reincarnation” device is a staple of Japan’s portal fantasies, it’s no surprise that My Next Life as a Villainess originated on the Shosetsuka ni Naro website , where tons of these stories began – so did Trapped in a Dating Sim. Beyond the reincarnation plot, the idea of taking a canonically bad character from an existing story and changing his or her destiny is a favourite device in fanfic. As of writing, for instance, some of the most popular Harry Potter fanfics being together the malefic Hogwarts student Draco Malfoy and the franchise’s heroine Hermione Granger. (They’re called, if you couldn’t guess, Dramione stories .)

But it goes beyond fanfic culture, into blockbusters. Think of the Wicked book and stage musical , which retells Wizard of Oz with the wicked witch as the wronged hero, or Disney doing comparable rehabs on its past iconic villainesses in Maleficent and Cruella. (Some pundits argue that the Joaquin Phoenix version of Joker does the same for a comic-book psycho.) On that basis, why not have the next Gundam anime focus entirely on Kycilia Zabi, such a memorable antagonist in the original TV series, showing what she’s like when she’s not consumed by blood and glory? And perhaps she could be possessed by a fan from our world, determined to fight for her better destiny.

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films . My Next Life as a Villainess is released in the UK by Anime Limited.

By Tom Wilmot.

Unlikely as it might be, the late Yasuharu Hasebe is one of Japan’s best-represented filmmakers overseas, with several of the director’s works making their way west over the past twenty or so years. Radiance Films continues the trend of bringing Hasebe’s trademark action movies to Blu-ray with the release of his electrifying directorial debut, Black Tight Killers (1966).

War photographer Honda (Akira Kobayashi) returns from Vietnam and immediately falls for air hostess Yoriko (Chieko Matsubara). However, their first date is suddenly interrupted when Yoriko is whisked away by a mysterious group of black-tight-wearing, knife-wielding, go-go dancing ninja, prompting Honda to search for the stolen beauty. What follows is a non-stop, action-packed, 007-inspired narrative complete with romance, double-crossings, and a hunt for hidden gold.

The gaudy, B-movie narrative, very loosely adapted from Michio Tsuzuki’s 1964 novel Triple Exposure, is merely the bassline to this beautifully shot actioner. Black Tight Killers is one of those delightful films where every aspect comes together perfectly. We’re treated to an abundance of exciting action sequences, ranging from helicopter pursuits and car chases to fist fights and shootouts. These inventive set-pieces keep the plot moving along at a ferocious pace as the film races through its 87-minute runtime.

Our hero, Honda, is the James Bond stand-in for all intents and purposes, displaying daring and debonair as he battles it out with all parties to get the girl and save the day – he even acquires a couple of gadgets along the way, a canister of laughing gas saving him from the bawdy ninja technique known as “octopus pot”. The titular black tight killers are wonderful oddities in their own right, clad in matching leather jackets and bouffant wigs, wielding razor-sharp vinyl records in place of shuriken stars. The ringleader, Akemi Kita’s Akiko, is the stand-out of the group, a brazen seductress who’s a welcome contrast to Chieko Matsubara’s sweet Yoriko.

The similarities to the distinct visual style of the legendary Seijun Suzuki are there for all to see, with Hasebe himself admitting the influence that his one-time mentor had on the picture. The liberal use of colour, vibrant backdrops, and generally superficial production design give the film a daydream-like quality, allowing us to escape into the heightened reality of its adventure. Another Suzuki-esque element, at least for the era, is the light-hearted tone that pervades the film. The mostly macho Honda sneezes and splutters his way through several tricky scenarios while go-go dancing breaks and unorthodox interrogations keep things fun and frisky.

Wildly entertaining as it might be, Black Tight Killers sticks out as an anomaly in Hasebe’s career. While this film and his sophomore effort, The Singing Gunman (1967), can be classified as action-comedies, the director’s subsequent works have a distinctly darker edge, featuring rougher characters and more brutally executed violence – shades of the latter are sprinkled throughout his debut. Even stylistically, the candy-coloured chaos of Black Tight Killers is a far cry from the muted, documentary-like approach that the filmmaker would employ in his early yakuza works, which showcase a form not dissimilar to that displayed in Kinji Fukasaku’s Toei-produced jitsuroku (‘true record’) gangster films.

Hasebe joined Japan’s oldest studio, Nikkatsu, in 1958, working for several years as a scriptwriter and assistant director before shooting Black Tight Killers in 1965. His promotion to full-fledged director came at the beginning of a transitionary period for the studio, as its so-called mukokuseki akushon (‘borderless action’) films, characterised by their foreign cultural elements and Hollywood influences, began to struggle at the box office. In response, Nikkatsu launched their nyu akushon (‘new action’) line in the late 1960s, with some of Hasebe’s key works falling into this sub-genre. The director’s noir-like actioner Massacre Gun (1967), yakuza masterpiece Retaliation (1968), and three entries in the Stray Cat Rock series (1970-71), which launched one Meiko Kaji to stardom, perfectly encapsulate the sexier, grittier, and more unforgiving nature of ‘new action’.

Although he’s best remembered in the West for his action flicks, Hasebe proved to be an extremely versatile filmmaker for the entirety of his career. Having initially left Nikkatsu after its sudden pivot to exclusively producing Roman manga issueo films in late 1971, the director returned to the studio to develop the infamous ‘violent pink’ sub-genre, producing pinku classics such as Sukeban Deka: Dirty Mary (1974) and Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976). Hasebe even graced the V-Cinema scene of the 1990s, helming around a dozen direct-to-video features that are begging to be unearthed, several starring frequent Takashi Miike collaborator Sho Aikawa.

Black Tight Killers also owes a lot to its leading man, the highly charismatic Akira Kobayashi. After joining Nikkatsu in 1956, the young actor steadily rose to stardom by working with the likes of Toshio Masuda (Rusty Knife, 1958), Seijun Suzuki (The Boy Who Came Back, 1958), and Buichi Saito (The Wandering Guitarist, 1959), becoming part of the studio’s esteemed ‘Diamond Line’ of actors by 1960.

Just as Black Tight Killers came at a time of change for both Hasebe and Nikkatsu at large, so too was Kobayashi at a transitional point in his career. As the 1960s wore on, the actor moved away from the rebellious delinquent roles of his youth and developed into the charming man of action that we find in the character of Honda. The reliable star would change further still in the years to come, collaborating with Hasebe on several yakuza pictures in which he plays tougher, meaner, more physically imposing figures.

Kobayashi’s performance as Honda marks a brief window of time in which the actor embodied all the alluringly playful characteristics of a Nikkatsu borderless action hero, as can be inferred from his suave and smoulder displayed on the film’s poster. It’s impossible to picture the film without him.

Radiance Films gives Black Tight Killers the premium treatment, with a stellar Blu-ray presentation packaged together with a few bonus features. The limited edition release includes a booklet essay written by Chris D, author of the excellent Outlaw Gangsters of Japanese Cinema (2005), who draws attention to the curious case of Hasebe’s missing Nikkatsu credits from 1961-1966 – a time during which the director reckons he worked on around 50-60 films.

While the filmmaker is unfortunately no longer around to talk about his efforts during this period, he does feature on this release in some small capacity – an archival interview from 2000 in which he details the making of his debut feature. Hasebe’s enthusiasm for filmmaking is palpable here as he grins his way through this brief discussion of his illustrious career.

The release also features an audio commentary from Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp, whose typically informative track not only guides us through the history of Nikkatsu’s borderless action movement but also offers background on the studio’s key figures both on- and off-screen. It’s always nice to see the spotlight shine on the names that too often slip by; in the cases of production designer Akiyoshi Satani and editor Akira Suzuki, the focus is certainly worthwhile.

In many respects, Yasuharu Hasebe’s Black Tight Killers represents the best of what Nikkatsu’s borderless action had to offer. With thrills and spills abound, the film is a dizzying slice of cinematic escapism that serves as a blistering introduction to one of Japan’s finest action directors.

Black Tight Killers is released in the UK by Radiance Films.