Month: April 2021

2016 was a big year for anime films. We got a very raw and human story on the effects of the atomic bomb with In This Corner of the World, and Your Name broke several records. For me personally however, there was one anime film from 2016 that stuck out above the others to me and still remains one of my favorite films to this day. I am of course talking about the film A Silent Voice, directed by Naoko Yamada and based off of the manga of the same name by Yoshitoki Ooima. This is a beautiful film about teens dealing with their own disabilities and coming to terms with their pasts. In this blog post I will be talking about why I love this movie so much and why you should watch it.

Up until this point, I have been avoiding reviewing anime movies in order to show that Japanese cinema is much more than just anime, but today I would like to take some time to talk about one of my favorite anime movies of all time. I will be reviewing Takeshi Koike’s 2009 animated film Redline, and talking about why it is one of my favorite animated films of all time. This is one of the most technically impressive animated movies that I have ever seen, and it is an absolute roller-coaster ride from start to finish.

For this post I’m going to do something a little different from usual. Instead of focusing on one movie, I am going to be comparing and contrasting two very important movies in the history of Japanese cinema. These two films are masterpieces of the horror genre and kicked off the J-Horror boom in the late 90s and early 2000s. I am of course talking about Hideo Nakata’s 1998 film Ring (or Ringu), and Takashi Shimizu’s 2002 film Ju-On: The Grudge (or Ju-On). Both films are constantly compared to each other, yet the two are very different from each other. In this post I will talk about what makes the two movies so special, what makes them unique from each other, and which one I prefer.