#Hideaki Matsumoto

[lea-heartscxiv]

Hideaki cada mañana sale a correr, me recuerda mucho al padre de los trillizos Itto, aunque hay que decir que este último sale con más ropa no es tan valiente de salir solo con un fundoshi y unas geta. ☃

[danganronpa-carpe-diem-official]

First character reveal for my fangan! Our protagonist Hideaki

[idontthinkimokaymentally]

Hello there Hideaki Matsumoto fans.

[yurimother]

New 'I'm in Love with the Villainess' Trailer Announces October 2 Premier, New Cast and Theme Revealed

On August 10, a second promotional video for the upcoming television anime adaptation of isekai Yuri series I'm in Love with the Villainess (Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou) was released. The trailer unveiled the series' October 2 premiere date and previewed the opening theme song, "Raise Y/Our Hands!!."

Main cast members Yuu Serizawa (Rae) and Karin Nanami (Claire) perform the opening theme, as well as the ending theme "O.C. Optimum Combination."

The trailer also announced new cast member joining Serizawa and Nanami, as follows:

KENN - Rod Bauer

Daisuke Namikawa - Thane Bauer

Youko Hikasa - Yu Bauer

New visuals were also uploaded to the series website along with the trailer.

Previously announced cast includes Aimi, Ikumi Hasegawa, Sara Matsumoto, and Minami Kurisaka. The anime is created at Platinum Vision and directed by Hideaki Oba (Love of Kill). Additional crew includes:

Ayumu Hisao - Script Composer

Youko Satou - Character Designer

Hijime Takakuwa - Sound Director

Noriyuki Asakura and Usagi to Uma - Music Composers

Yachi Kiyotaka - Art Director

Yamagami Aiko - Color Designer

Sato Yoko and Kobayashi Toshimitsu - Animation Directors

I'm in Love with the Villainess is based on the series of the same name by Inori. Originally released as a webnovel on Shousetsuka ni Naro in 2018, the series was picked up by BL Bunko for digital publishing. It ran for five volumes, concluding in 2021. Hanagata illustrates the light novels.

A manga adaptation of I'm in Love with the Villainess began serialization in Comic Yuri Hime! in June of 2020. Aonoshimo illustrates the manga adaptation. Seven Seas licenses the manga, light novels, and the spin-off series She's So Cheeky for a Commoner in English.

I'm in Love with the Villainess is a popular series, especially with overseas consumers. It has been praised for its world building, characters, and emphasis on explicitly discussing LGBTQ+ identity and life.

The anime is set to premiere on October 2, 2023 and stream in internationally on Crunchyroll.

Source: I'm in Love with the Villainess Anime Official Website

[canmom]

Do you think Hideaki Anno is right-wing or is it too difficult to tell from his works?

Haha that's a question.

I'll focus on nationalism rather than trying to get into, say, gender politics here, since that's the accusation that most seems to follow Anno around.

Anno's politics are... hard to pin down from his work alone, I think. He's like... a prototypical case of that generation of 'apolitical' otaku that followed after the Anpo generation, with Eva pretty much the definitive statement of the 90s psychological turn. But that said... I can definitely see the argument that there are nationalist themes in some of his works like Gunbuster, though I definitely don't buy every reading in this series (lots of dubious kanji reading). He definitely has that otaku fascination with war machinery and war media (apparently he's a big fan of The Battle for Okinawa and watched it over 100 times), which can easily blend into imperialist ideology.

But there's complications here. For example, the Animekritik series cites the setting of Gunbuster in Okinawa as something formative to the nationalist ideology they are trying to illustrate - in part in relation to the ongoing controversy over American military bases in Okinawa. Anno has at least been on record as saying he's disinterested in Western culture, and I can see the reading of Jung-Freud as an external Other who is shown up by the Japanese girls, somehow simultaneously representing the USSR, Europe and the States. But anti-Americanism in Japan can come in both left and right wing flavours (c.f. Anpo). Communists want the Americans out too! Portraying Okinawa as a military training camp in a Japan-led military coalition certainly comes across as a more nationalist take on that whole matter, but I feel like it's got about the same level of serious nationalist commitment as Doctor Who putting random British people all over space.

When Gainax has played around with nationalist imagery it's usually been in a kind of ironic sendup way - see Ash's writeup about the Aikoku Sentai Dai Nippon controversy, in which Daicon Film staff were disdainful at the accusation that their goofy toku film reflected a genuine nationalist sentiment. While Imaishi takes it further, a lot of Anno's work is also about playfully reappropriating past works. In Anno's case a lot of that is classic tokusatsu, Ultraman in particular, and also Leiji Matsumoto's scifi, notably Space Battleship Yamato, which, well... you know the deal there lol. But it's not so simple to go from that to 'Anno is a nationalist'.

Eva doesn't tend to attract these accusations, but I recall the controversy came back around with Shin Godzilla, though to my mind it's hard to find a straightforwardly nationalist reading of that movie. (It's a film about the experience of the earthquake and Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, and it's critical of Japan's bureaucracy, but equally one where the JSDF repeatedly get their shit handed to them and civilian infrastructure is what actually stops Godzilla - not to mention Godzilla is painted as quite a tragic figure here!) It all feels pretty tenuous.

I haven't seen as many of Anno's live action films as I'd like, so I can't comment as much on the more recent Shin films, Love & Pop, Shiki-Jitsu etc. And it's always possible for subtler allusions to slip by the anglophone viewer. Still, I don't personally think Anno's post-Gunbuster work is particularly nationalist in outlook. I certainly haven't seen any evidence of him favouring, say, war crime denial, anti-Korean sentiment, remilitarisation, etc etc. - he's definitely not as dubious a figure as someone like Hajime Isayama. But it's not like, anti-nationalist either! It's just kind of hard to read in those terms.

So I lean towards your second option, I'm not convinced he's a nationalist or particularly right wing. He happily associates with Hayao Miyazaki, who's definitely not a right wing guy. But Anno'll also let hilariously cooked stuff like whatever On A Gloomy Night was supposed to be into the Animator Expo. So I don't think he's particularly left wing either, he's no Ikuni! But Anno's fiction is very individual focused, full of psychoanalytic themes and internal conflict. He can vividly portray trauma and complex power dynamics. There's a lot to appreciate in works like Eva from a left-wing angle. I don't really know why this association of nationalism follows him around.

Idk, maybe there's a bunch of interviews I'm missing! Presumably you have a reason for asking this question...

[dropintomanga]

Manga I Enjoyed in 2022

Happy New Year, everyone! I know this is somewhat late, but better late than never. I originally wanted to do this in a video format like I did for my favorite 2021 manga. But after some health issues that started late last year and finally went away this month, I decided to write about my favorite manga of 2022 instead of recording myself in an awkward manner.

Here we go!

Honorable Mention: Choujin X by Sui Ishida - This title reminds me so much of Masakazu Katsura’s ZETMAN. It’s about a young man named Tokio Kurohara who suddenly becomes a supernatural being called a Choujin after being attacked by one in the street. Tokio then enters a world where he meets other Choujins, good and bad, and realizes that he’s part of a larger scheme that potentially involves him being a “god/savior” of all Choujins. I love the art and the story is fascinating. I feel that this is potentially Ishida at his finest when he’s not being rushed to create a fun story (which is what happened with Tokyo Ghoul: re). I’m glad that chapters of this series are somewhat sporadic as it allows time for a more structured story and one that I know Ishida is wanting to tell.

On to my top 5 of the year!

No.5 - Kaiju No. 8 by Naoya Matsumoto - After Spy x Family and Chainsaw Man, this is the next big breakout anime hit from Shueisha. Kafka Hibino was once a young man who wanted to become a kaiju-fighting soldier alongside his childhood friend, but instead is now a 30+-year old cleaner of kaiju remains. He one day encounters a certain powerful kaiju who enters his body. Kafka becomes a threat of humanity all while retaining his. He enters a kaiju defense force in order to control his abilities and protect those he cares about.

When I saw promotional art of the series posted all over France last year, I realized I had to check this series out. I’m so glad I did. The art is amazing, the story is intense, and the soldier outfits are really cool. Kaiju No. 8 satisfies any fan looking for something new that’s similar to Attack on Titan.

No. 4 - Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe - I don’t really hear many people talk about this series, but I feel this is one of the best fantasy stories I’ve read in a while. It also has one of the best manga heroines this decade so far. Frieren is a long-living elf who once saved the world from a demon king alongside a group of adventurers. 50 years later, she embarks on another journey to see off the hero who changed her life long after his death all while making note of humanity’s struggle to define themselves with the short life span they’re given.

I feel that this series is somewhat Yotsuba&!-ish in terms of having memorable chapters that are one-offs. However, when it gets to the major story arcs, Frieren excels in delivering gut punches. The flashback scenes are amazing and Frieren has a variety of facial expressions that make readers appreciate her. I have kept up with the Japanese releases and the story keeps getting better and better. This series has a way of making you think about human nature.

No. 3 - Akane-banashi by Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moue - I got into this series in the Fall after hearing Hideaki Anno and Eiichiro Oda praise it. This is arguably the best series in Weekly Shonen Jump right now and it’s not even a battle manga. Akane Osaki, a young girl whose father was a rakugo performer, is on a mission to become the best rakugo performer in all of Japan after her father was shamed in front of a major rakugo audience. It’s very refreshing and the hype does remind me of the early days of The Promised Neverland. 

This manga is a really good case of how to use art and panels to tell a very cool and well-paced story. I also love how the main character is written as she stands out among the many popular male Jump protagonists. I think what makes this series so good is how relatable the characters and setting are. There’s always something exciting happen in every chapter because of that.

No.2 - Sensei’s Pious Lie by Akane Torikai - This series isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I can’t recommend this to anyone who’s experienced sexual trauma and hasn’t healed completely from it. But I can’t help but be enamored with seeing how messy the characters in this series are. Misuzu Hara, a teacher, is a victim of sexual abuse by her best friend’s husband. One day, she finds out a male student of hers is interested in her. Misuzu then learns the student is also a victim of sexual abuse and the two become involved in a complicated entanglement that affects everyone around them. 

This is a very uncomfortable read, but I understood what Torikai was trying to say. When it comes to love and sex, people get caught up with the worst aspects of both in terrifying ways. And there’s ways to overcome them when possible. People are often known as monsters to many are still human beings at their core. You can still care about someone and want them out of your life for good. There’s no one to root in this series and I’m glad Kodansha USA brought this work over because sex (and especially sexual violence) is very often a difficult topic to talk about and life is sadly never that black or white.

No.1 - Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto - Another Fujimoto one-shot on what it means to live in the face of loss. I’ve written about this one-shot in the past and the last pages still stick out to me to this day. I appreciate how Fujitomo uses the main character in a way that shows how a major loss of a relationship can affect someone even when they get older.

I want to remember people who will eventually leave me and celebrate their lives. I just hate how everyone is pressed to move on and not process whatever grief they will experience over their lifetime. Goodbye, Eri is highly relevant to everyone today because there’s only so much one can take when it comes to death and when we don’t take the time to talk about it in a productive way with people who will listen, we lose what makes humanity beautiful. In a time where some folks are talking about immortality and living on via technology, this manga reminds me that what we really want from life is genuine and unconditional love from people.

I hope you enjoyed this list and here’s to a fun 2023 full of exciting manga titles to read!

[likmacuhylang]

Results of September

Books: 1. "Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects" by Bertrand Russell

Cinema and anime: 1. "Neon Genesis Evangelion" by Hideaki Anno 2. "Murder on the Orient Express" by Sidney Lumet 3. "Men" by Alex Garland 4. "Amélie" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet 5. "Crimes of the Future" by David Cronenberg 6. "The Scent of Green Papaya" by Tran Anh Hung 7. "Inu-Oh" by Hideo Furukawa, Taiyou Matsumoto, Masaaki Yuasa, Fuuga Yamashiro 8. "The Duke of Death and His Maid S1" by Inoue, Yoshinobu Yamakawa

Manga: 1. "Vanilla Jingai x Jingai Yuri Anthology" 2. "Cinnamon Jingai x Ningen Yuri Anthology" 3. "Neko no Otera no Chion-san" by Makoto Ojiro

[01sentencereviews]

“New-To-Me” - July 2023

The Ladies Man (1961, Jerry Lewis)

Dreams (1990, Akira Kurosawa)

Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer)

Torso (1973, Sergio Martino)

R100 (2013, Hitoshi Matsumoto)

Hotel (2004, Jessica Hausner)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg)

The Idiots (1998, Lars von Trier)

+++

His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

ivans xtc. (2000, Bernard Rose)

The Sopranos [Full Series] (1999-2007, David Chase)

The White Ribbon (2009, Michael Haneke)

New Releases:

Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

The First Slam Dunk (Takehiko Inoue)

John Early: Now More Than Ever (Emily Allan & Leah Hennessey)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie)

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Shin Kamen Rider (Hideaki Anno)

The Stroll (Zackary Drucker & Kristen Parker Lovell)

Talk to Me (Michael Philippou & Danny Philippou)

[setsuyakurotaki]

Staff Credit Brand : ANREALAGE + ASICS ANREALAGE Designer : Kunihiko Morinaga

Hardware Design / planning : Motoi Ishibashi(Rhizomatiks Research) Hardware Engineer : Yoichi Sakamoto (Rhizomatiks Research) Hardware Engineer : Toshitaka Mochizuki (Rhizomatiks Research) Hardware Engineer : Hideaki Tai (Rhizomatiks Research) Lighting Designer, Software Engineer : Daito Manabe (Rhizomatiks Research) Sound Design : Setsuya Kurotaki (Rhizomatiks Research) Producer : Takao Inoue (Rhizomatiks Research) Assistant Project Manager : Tomoyo Obata (Rhizomatiks Research) Film Director / Offline Editor : Kenichiro Shimizu (HOTZIPANG) Assistant Film Director : Yuriko Sumi (HOTZIPANG) Cameraman : Ryuhei Watanabe Camera 1st Assistant : Tomohiko Takeno D.I.T : Hirohide Osawa Lightman : Yuuki Maeshima Light 1st Assistant : Tassufumi Shimada CG Designer : Shogo Kawata(GORAKU) Online Editor : Kensaku Numata(Ray Corporation) Production Manager : Mari Matsumoto

©︎2017 ASICS Corporation All Rights Reserved.

[gonagaiworld]

Naoya Matsumoto: "Kaiju No. 8 è nato dalle mie frustrazioni, ora conquista il mondo" Il celebre film Shin Godzilla di Hideaki Anno ha avuto un ruolo fondamentale nella genesi del manga. Info:--> https://www.gonagaiworld.com/naoya-matsumoto-kaiju-no-8-e-nato-dalle-mie-frustrazioni-ora-conquista-il-mondo/?feed_id=452670&_unique_id=665c11bca8565 #Interviste #KaijuNo.8

[miumiuworkmovie]

【 MusicVideo 】 

CRYAMY 10th Release「FCKE」より『世界』 Music Video監督 Dir : miura ento Camera : Yuki Nahira / Hideki Mizushima  / Hikaru Sano Lighting Director  : Naoki Ito / Abiko Shuto  (Over The Clip) PM : Hideaki Matsumoto  / Kazuki Ryunohira 衣装協力：humor Sugamo

2023.3.1 公開 ▶️Youtube

[fighterxaos]

Funimation to Stream Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199

Funimation to Stream Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199

Funimation recently updated their Fall 2017 lineup with the English dub of the “Space Battleship Yamato 2199″ anime titled,  “Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199.”  The series will premiere on FunimationNow on November 8. 

The project was directed by Yutaka Izubachi (RahXephon) and the series is a remake of the original 1974 series titled, “Space Battleship Yamato.” The series was first…

[danganronpa-carpe-diem-official]

Hideaki's character profile

[natsuluna]

I was thinking about some of those old school anime and Western cartoons I used to watch as a child… some of them were very mature and depressing af! This explains a lot of things… Who do I need to sue? I can’t lmao

[runawaylildevil]

2006.08.10. 「うたばん」

[canmom]

Animation Night 71: Blue Blazes, part 2

Hey everyone! Welcome back to Animation Night! Tonight will be the first Animation Night running on Nausicaa, my newwww computtteeerrrrrr :3333

There's some exciting things coming up on Animation Night. AniObsessive recently wrote a fascinating article on one of the major works of Jiří Trnka, and as soon as I can find a decent quality encode with English subs, we'll be showing that for sure! But for now... I still don't quite have all my usual torrenting systems setup on this computer. So I think I'm going to take the easy out this week and follow up on the thread from last week to watch the rest of Blue Blazes!

So to briefly recap... Blue Blazes (Aoi Honō) is a TV drama based on a semi-fictionalised autobiographical manga by someone who went to university with Anno. Thus it follows Moyuru Honō, a student at the Osaka University of Arts. He's an obsessive manga otaku with a particular thing for Leiji Matsumoto, and lives his life in a constantly bombastic way, swinging from hope to despair in just a moment. Honō convinces himself that he is in a rivalry with Hideaki Anno, who is in fact everything Honō wishes he was - just as much of a huge anime and manga nerd (and obsessive Ultraman fan who is constantly acting out Ultraman-style slow motion when he lies down) but with the real drawing and animation talent. The story follows Honō's struggle to make his name in anime or manga.

The show is driven by Honō's internal monologue, and gets a lot of mileage out of its exaggerated manga-like presentation. But not everyone around Honō is a normie - we have some pretty colourful side characters like future mangaka Kentarō Yano, seen above, president of the manga club and always there to rub in Honō's failures with his full on ojousama laugh. There's also a love triangle between Honō and supportive Tonko on the one hand and athletic Hiromi on the other. Meanwhile... the other strand follows Anno and the circle of friends that will one day form Gainax, with Anno as the ridiculous manga-protagonist type who will sit down a visiting cousin to watch all of Gundam.

What's the interest from an animation perspective? Well, you know I'm interested in early Gainax, but it's also a brilliant sendup of animation school and sakubutas [translator's note: 'sakubuta' is a pejorative term used on the imageboard 2ch for fans who are overly obsessed with animation at the expense of everything else. Sakuga fans have adopted it as a joking term of self-reference] and very dense with nods to the old anime and manga that inspired it. So it's basically a chance to weeb out. Here, someone's broken down all the allusions in the OP...

And here, I'll post a few other clips from the first couple of episodes. Here's Honō's first encounter with Anno...

Here's Honō trying to figure out how to explain the appeal of Yoshinori Kanada's animation to his crush...

And here's Anno being just as much of a nerd about Miyazaki's episode of Lupin III Part 2 (see: Animation Night 143).

Hopefully enough to whet your appetite! It's a pretty easy show to pick up so even if you didn't come by last week, would love to see you and I can catch you up on anything important.

We'll be going live now at twitch.tv/canmom and starting the show in about 15 minutes!

Next week we'll be back to actual animation, I promise.