Well, it’s final. 2020 Olympic will be held in Tokyo. Now, it’s buzzing everywhere; from internet to TV to coffee shops: who will direct the opening ceremony? It will be very hard to top London, they say. Hayao Miyazaki? Well, he announced his retirement from animation, but not from anything else. How about Anno? Well, Katsuhiro Otomo must be the man, since his AKIRA predicted 2020 Tokyo Olympic, in dystopian universe.
Japan had been one of the largest market for European and Hollywood films in the Eastern hemisphere until its totalitarian regime attacked the Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. Though the government was hostile toward the Allies, Japanese film exhibitors were still importing and marketing Hollywood films even in 1941. Here are the pages from the magazine called “Nihon Eiga (Japanese Film)”, July 1941. Two Hollywood films were featured in the special section: THE RAINS CAME (1939) and THE UNDER-PUP (1939). THE RAINS CAME was the 20th Century Fox production directed by the seasoned professional, Clearance Brown, and featured Myrna …
Japanese love robots. It is a nation of AIBO (remember the Sony dog robots?), ASIMO and NAO. Japanese literally created thousands of robot animes, starting from ASTRO BOY in 1950s. Now, it was foreseeable that Japanese fans of robots would be captivated by Guillermo del Toro’s PACIFIC RIM. And we are. There is a report of rather disappointing box office results from the opening weekend, but the reactions from its audience are exceptionally better. Twitter is filled with illustrations drawn by the fans of the film, some of which are simply amazing. As I have discussed before, Japanese consumed incredible …
