meta: Action

Once thought lost, then found intact, this rapid-fire sendup of/homage to anime tropes is fitfully funny, but better in its pieces than across its whole

Anyone curious about 'Lupin III' or Hayao Miyazaki's career, start here, as this is a grandly entertaining introduction to both at once

A functionally competent follow-up to the cult classic, but when your ancestor is a cult classic, you want more than just functional follow-up

Calling it an anime 'Clash Of The Titans' falls far short; this staggeringly ambitious respinning of Greek mythic adventure is a must-see

A raucous fusion of two genres (SF and comedy), and just like its two main characters, it's a symbiosis, not a collision

Why transmute Ozamu Dazai's 'No Longer Human' into medico-punk science fiction? Good question

Shinya Tsukamoto's grimy underworld odyssey about a man obsessed with the weapon that killed his girlfriend is more potential than payoff

Comparison with 'Beastars' is inevitable, but Studio Trigger's story of man-animal hybrids trying to live in harmony plays it safer and more accessible -- and less intrinsically interesting

Satoshi Kon's most "conventional" movie was also his funniest, a coincidence-driven romp through Tokyo's lower depths

Easily the weakest 'Ghost In The Shell' project thus far, but with a tease of hope at the end of its first half

This grand and glorious epic returns to home video for English speaking audiences in a spectacular new Blu-ray Disc edition; it is as essential as it gets

A gorgeous homage to everything from Meiko Kaji's femme-violence films to 'Black Lagoon', but it's too top-heavy with plot and not resourceful enough about its own best ideas

Studio Trigger's first theatrical film is so dazzling it threatens to melt the eyes right out of the head, but suffers from feeling like a TV series truncated into a two-hour slot

The animated adaptation of Rei Hiroe's ferocious homage to '80s action and Hong Kong cinema has all the attitude and muscle of its source, and also all its soul and insight

From the pen of Nisioisin came this genre-bending and -busting samurai-era fantasy, adapted into a festive eyeful of an anime where there's as much wordplay as swordplay

A prime case study for how a film can be an fine adaptation of beloved source material, while also being breathless, overcrowded, and tangled as a story

Osamu Tezuka's feudal-era supernatural epic manga gives us two antiheroes, mutilated in body and spirit alike, both seeking wholeness

Four teams of writers and artists from Western comics deep-dive into the 'Ghost In The Shell'-verse, and arise with four divergent and arresting visions

Jee-woon Kim's live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's 'Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade' is passable on its own, but doesn't come close to the primal shadow-play sorcery of the original

On having a reckoning with the god-emperor of modern manga, in a restored English-language edition at last