Tag: anime

Following up on the “monumental battles” of last year’s Pokemon World Championships in San Diego, Jevon Phillips gives us this piece about the competitions taking place next weekend. Hawaii will soon be beset by Hitmonlees, Vaporeons and even Toxicroaks as the Pokemon World Championships descend on the Big Island on Aug. 14 and 15. The card game is uber popular, the cartoon (“Pokemon: DP Sinnoh League” on Cartoon Network) is going into its 13th season and the animated movies are still ranking in the top five overseas every time they’re released — with a new one coming in 2011. But it’s actually the video games that are at the heart of the franchise. In the U.S., more than 2.7 million copies of Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver have been sold since launch in March 2010, and the company is about ...

As protesters paraded outside the ArcLight Hollywood theater Thursday evening, signs filled the air with hand-written phrases such as “Support fair casting!” and “Hollywood is racist and too ignorant to know it!”  The chant of “Get it right, M. Night!” rose above the noise of Sunset Boulevard rush-hour traffic. Meanwhile, just inside the ArcLight’s doors, an usher busied herself preparing rows of 3-D glasses for the next showing of “The Last Airbender.” Released Thursday, the M. Night Shyamalan film has been criticized for casting Caucasian actors as Asian characters.  Based on the anime-inspired Nickelodeon cartoon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” the movie’s story has many connections to Asian and Inuit culture. While the movie is mostly faithful to the story, protesters say, it does not accurately represent the Asian ethnicities of the main characters. While irritating to fans, the issue ...

Since its inception at the San Jose Red Lion Hotel in 1992, the Anime Expo has grown bigger each year.  The celebration of Japanese anime and manga now claims the Los Angeles Convention Center as its home, and this year will expand into L.A. Live’s Nokia Theatre, Club Nokia and Nokia Plaza. Here are some highlights from the biggest anime convention in the United States, which runs Thursday through Sunday.  AKB48 takes the stage at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Nokia Theatre. The group has what Japanese refer to as “idol” status, meaning it features attractive young women who regularly dazzle the public eye.  The 48-member band sings J-pop, wears identical outfits and looks irresistibly cute.  The Anime Music Video Contest showcases the work of individuals putting anime clips to their favorite songs Thursday at 8:30 p.m. at Nokia Theatre. For ...

Here’s a longer version of Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times story on Anime Expo 2010 as well as a promotional video for the event that starts Thursday …  On Thursday, Nicki Ousley will don a Victorian-style blue dress with white lace and wield a fierce saber. Kate Hopp and 11 friends will dress up as residents of feudal Japan, wearing kimonos, peasant pants and straw hats accessorized with samurai swords and plastic snakes. Jayson Nufable will tie a bandanna over the mullet hairstyle he’s grown and cover his body in futuristic head-to-toe armor. Their clothes will be unusual, but Ousley, Hopp and Nufable won’t look out of place. They’re headed to the 2010 Anime Expo, which hits downtown Los Angeles Thursday through Sunday, offering the chance for anime and manga fans to revel in a celebration of Japanese pop culture. Expecting to ...

EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK   Sometimes you hear the single-sentence concept behind a new animated series and you just smirk and say, “Yeah, OK, I’ll take a look at that.” That was my reaction when I first heard about “Mari-Kari,” a twisted bit of humor from the fiendish folks  at FEARnet. The premise of the series, which premieres June 3: Shannen Doherty voices the roles of identical twin sisters Mari and Kari, who are cute and lively grade-school students – well, Mari is probably a bit more lively considering that Kari happens to be a dead, blue-faced, vengeful apparition who slaughters anyone who messes with her sister. It’s sort of like the Olsen twins, circa 1989, mashed up with ”The Sixth Sense” and “The Fairly Odd Parents.” And did we mention it’s Shannen Doherty? Here, for the first time anywhere, is a look at the show… “Mari-Kari” will start off ...

M. Night Shyamalan has a massive plan in mind for “The Last Airbender” — a patient film trilogy that presents a fantasy epic and also grows progressively darker as its young characters (and actors) mature in front of moviegoers. That brings to mind both ”The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the “Harry Potter” franchise, and, as you might imagine, that has stirred excitement among executives at Paramount Pictures who would love to have a magical franchise that pulls in billions of dollars at the box office. But because the stakes are so high, there has also been considerable behind-the-scenes hand-wringing because of a nasty fan backlash on a touchy subject — race and casting. Check the venting and venom we heard in more than 100 comments that followed an “Airbender” post in January. Here’s how one reader summed it up: “I am one of the many who is seriously ...

Hero Complex contributor Liesl Bradner offers an intriguing look back at a forgotten age of heroics in Japan…   Five years before Lee Falk’s masked-man adventures with “The Phantom” began in newspapers, a hero called Golden Bat was saving damsels in distress in the streets of Depression-era Japan. He was first seen in 1931 (seven years before Superman first took flight and eight before that Gotham City fellow who dressed like a bat) and his exploits were told in kamishibai, which was street theater that used painted illustrations. Author Eric P. Nash examines the little-known art form and predecessor to modern-day anime and manga in his recent book “Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater.” I wrote about the book and this long-gone street entertainment for Culture Monster, the arts blog for the Los Angeles Times. Here’s a bit from that piece that describes ...

INTERVIEW WITH NICOLAS CAGE AND FREDDIE HIGHMORE It’s been 57 years since Astro Boy first took flight in Japan, but today the rocket-powered robot boy attempts flying to new heights with a feature film that may surprise even loyal fans with its bittersweet tale. “Astro Boy” features Freddie Highmore in the role of the mechanized wonder boy while Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy and Samuel L. Jackson lead the deep supporting cast. The movie is heavy on heroic action and futuristic spectacle, but there are also themes of identity and loss that may remind adult viewers of Steven Spielberg’s “A.I: Artificial Intelligence.” For Cage, it was those themes that set the movie apart from the standard lighter-than-air animated entertainments of today. The 45-year-old father said he was pulled in by the premise of a synthetic boy who believes he is a ...

Our brave soul Jevon Phillips dropped in on the Pokemon world championships and lived to tell the tale…  Long before hearthrob vampires and boy wizards seized the hearts, minds and wallets of American youth, Pokemon was a dominant force. It was on the cover of Time magazine and became a billion-dollar industry with a cartoon broadcast in 153 countries, a trading-card game that boasts 150,000 organized play members, and a video game (Pokemon Platinum version) that sold more than 3.75 million copies worldwide. Despite all that, the brand may have lost a little cache in this ”What’s hot right now?’ culture. But not to those who gathered in the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel this weekend for the 2009 Pokemon Video Game and Trading Card World Championships. Thirty-two American players, from 7 to 44 years old, did battle with 16 Japanese players and 12 European players for the title of Pokemon ...

Our Jevon Phillips braved the Anime Expo this weekend and here’s his report…   Fans are fans.  Fanatical about … whatever they’re fanatical about (click above photo to see more).  The subject of choice this past weekend in Los Angeles was the Anime Expo, a celebration of anime, manga, music and cosplay. The Japanese-style of art and characterizations dominated the exhibition floor space of the convention center. Vendors sold clothing, toys, accessories like swords and blue wigs, and even things for those friends of yours who are bastards. Video games, like the new Tentsuko vs. Capcom (more on that below) and others also enticed conventioneers.  But, for many of those attending, the most colorful and attractive part of the convention was the parade of sometimes familiar, mostly imaginative costumed characters — and theskill that comes along with creating their masterpieces.  they even boasted other talents like playing ...