meta: Japan and Elsewhere

Sang-Il Lee's Meiji-era remake of Clint Eastwood's now-classic Western doesn't quite eclipse its predecessor, but it doesn't need to; it stands very nicely on its own

Maybe it could only take someone from outside Japan, like director Paul Schrader, to make an insightful movie about one of Japan's most divisive and fascinating figures

Further proof that some anime-to-live-action adaptations need to either be done at the right scale or not done at all

The third and final movie adapted from Project Itoh's novels retains the timely and unsettling ideas from its source material, but also its dramatic awkwardness

It's not good, to be sure -- but maybe being its own special kind of bad is more valuable than we think

Felipe Smith's 2010 manga did more than show a Western creator could make use of the form; it provided a riotous critique of the very audience that might seek it out

Whatever my own readings of the film, the 2017 'Ghost In The Shell' is still problematic in ways that are potentially a bad model for other live-action anime

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' for the J-lit set; a show that has one great creative invention and then spends its entire runtime doing nothing of consequence with it

Steven Savage and Bonnie Walling's study of 'Sailor Moon' fandom documents the way the show transformed a generation of young women, and how they transformed it right back

Twice filmed, and twice flawed in the filming, maybe the wise way to bring Frank Herbert's space (and spice) saga to the screen would be via an anime adaptation

Of all the anime/manga projects to film as a Western live-action production, you could scarcely find a harder sell or a worse fit than 'Naruto'

An unfinished but tantalizing collaboration between two of anime (and manga's) most idiosyncratic creative personalities, Satoshi Kon and Mamoru Oshii, this book inspires a close reading -- and no end of wonder about where one man's imagination began and the other one's ended

Is our enjoyment of anime enhanced by having an intimate knowledge of Japan, or is that something only those who call themselves critics should worry about?

Casting Scarlet Johannson as Motoko Kusanagi is proof the live-action 'Ghost in the Shell' is as misguided a production as any previous Western attempt to adapt anime

A gem of a show that confronts what it means for Japan and the West to be curious about each other -- and also how 'moé' can be an actual theme and not just a fetish

How is it that a live-action 'Black Lagoon' -- itself a loving homage to John Woo and Jerry Bruckheimer alike -- hasn't yet been put on the slate?

Plenty of laughs ooze forth from this 'cute Cthulhu mythos' comedy, but it's most intriguing for how something so dark is made fodder for something so silly

If Hollywood is allegedly plundering anime for ideas and inspirations, that only shows it has good taste -- but it's an awkward thesis at best

A massive budget wouldn't be needed to realize this most emotionally-powered of dark fantasies -- just proper attention to its story and characters

This poor man's 'Black Lagoon' embodies many of the problems inherent in a show about antiheroes and gray areas