Although it’s long been overshadowed by fully manga-faithful 2009 successor Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (much-famed #1 rated anime on MAL for years), the original 2003 anime adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa’s 27-volume manga masterwork still holds up today as an emotional and intelligent adaptation of, what was at the time, an incomplete…

I always have this feeling… The feeling that I’m losing something — Sayuri Sawatari Makoto Shinkai’s third anime production (after She and Her Cat and Voices of a Distant Star) was 2004's ambitious full-length ninety-minute movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days, this time made at CoMix Wave Inc…

Looking back, it’s remarkable that Makoto Shinkai’s second short film found international success so quickly, and that this would act as the springboard to his later cinematic dominance with movies such as Your Name and Weathering with You. His first (award-winning) solo short, She and Her Cat was a 5-minute…

2020’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train was an undeniable international financial success for Sony pictures’ subsidiary Aniplex. Following directly on from the popular 26-episode first TV season, Mugen Train broke all previous box office records made by any cinematic anime release — even Miyazaki’s oscar-winning Spirited…

Crunchyroll is definitely on a (crunchy) roll with their theatrical releases of late. Not only did they release the recent Laid-Back Camp, The Quintessential Quintuplets and Reincarnated as a Slime movies, on Valentine’s Day 2023 they brought us the latest movie instalment of one of my favourite manga-to-anime adaptations of…

After I covered this season’s new shows earlier in the week, it’s now the turn of the multitudes of sequels and ongoing shows to get the spotlight. There’s a few big ones, but we’ll start with one of the biggest:

Somehow we’re already halfway through 2023’s first anime season, and although there aren’t as many big shows as the unbelievably hype-packed Autumn 2022 season, there’s a great mix of interesting new things, ongoing shows, and sequels. …

Often incorrectly identified as “the next Hayao Miyazaki”, Japanese filmmaker Makoto Shinkai certainly found international success and acclaim following the release of his 2016 film Your Name, which he then followed up with the slightly less widely rapturously received (but still extremely successful) Weathering With You in 2019. April 2023…

2022 was pretty good for theatrical anime releases in the UK, so I’m optimistic that 2023 will be just as good. The first anime movie on wide release this year is the newest entry in Crunchyroll’s That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime franchise — Scarlet Bond. Unlike other…