Your daily dose of mukokuseki
Mukokuseki (?????) is a word meaning “without country of origin.” Since Koichi Iwabuchi started using it to refer to the statelessness of anime, the term has come into more common use among Western critics. Generally it refers to the way Japanese cultural products can be seen to erase national history and identity in an attempt [...]
And now, a surreal video from Japan about food.
Via Just Hungry, we learn of Air Yakiniku, which is not an airline whose vessels are made solely from grilled beef, but something far, far stranger. Seriously, Lynch and Cronenberg could not have made a creepier ad if they’d tried. Note the total blackness surrounding the characters of the commercial. Note the muted laughter of [...]
And now, a descent into immaturity:
I CALLED IT! Panels that generate energy from vibrations have been laid by ticket gates through which up to 80,000 passengers pass every day at Tokyo station. In theory, the system consisting of slates, rubber sheets and ceramics can generate enough energy to power automatic ticket gates or electric billboards at the station. In Fitting [...]
Reasons to go running:
Two rejections in as many weeks. I’m missing a weekend of free Japanese films, including one by Takeshi Miike, to go out of town. …By contrast, running is simply a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. I’m not good at it, but it’s something I can at least manage. Also lately [...]
Review: Astral Project
I found out about Astral Project via this post at MangaBlog, and I’m glad I did. Because even if this story didn’t have call girls, cults, and free jazz beats that literally pull you outside your body, it has one very special thing going for it: it makes me feel like I’m back in Japan.
Porno and children and manga, oh my!
I just finished a new post over at FPS about the recent developments at the intersection of fandom and the law, specifically whether anime and manga featuring children in explicit situations still counts as child pornography. (In Canada, it already does.) The argument for this definition states that even though the images are drawn and [...]
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Photo: Kayleigh McCollum Books
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