News

On January 26, 2024, it was revealed that Satoshi Kirishima, a fugitive wanted in connection with a series of corporate bombings and a member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, had been hospitalized in Kanagawa Prefecture. He had been living under an alias but came forward, saying, “I want to face the end with my real name.” Kirishima passed away three days after the news broke, and due to his death, he was not prosecuted for his suspected involvement in the bombing of the Korea Industrial and Economic Research Institute building, for which he had been on the national wanted list under charges of violating explosives control regulations. Banmei Takahashi has come up with a biopic on this contradictory figure, focusing on both of his capacities.

I Am Kirishima is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival

As such, the movie begins in the 70s, when Japan’s rapid economic growth was...

Informa is a Japanese series directed by Michihito Fujii starring Kenta Kiritani, Reo Sano and Go Morita.

Fancy a series about committed journalists? Yes, the kind that seeks the news and fervently fights to get the scoop… like in the movies before the Internet era.

Informa has just arrived from Japan.

Storyline

Kanji Mishima (Leo Sano) is a reporter for the Weekly Times, a newspaper that mainly reports gossip. He feels a sense of emptiness and discomfort as he spends his days chasing celebrity scandals without a shred of the journalistic spirit he had aspired to. One day, Mishima goes to Amagasaki to pick up a certain person under the direction of Asuka Nagasawa (Megumi), the editor-in-chief. Nagasawa sends him off by chance to fulfill Mishima’s former wish to “see a world you would never see if you lived a normal life,” but what awaits him is Keijiro Kihara...

No matter when Miyazaki decides to step down permanently (never probably), the spirit of Studio Ghibli is bound to live forever, with the impact the company and the Japanese master’s productions had and continue having being visible quite frequently in the whole spectrum of the anime world. “Penguin Highway” is a testament to the fact.

“Penguin Highway” screened at

Festival des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul

The story is based on the homonymous novel by Tomihiko Morimi, whose works include “Night is Short, Walk on Girl” and “The Eccentric Family” and revolves around Aoyama, a schoolboy who is very bright, headstrong, and with the general, inquisitive mentality of a true scientist. As fourth grade has just ended and summer vacations are upon him, he has to face a number of adventures.

The first one comes from a rather unusual event, since a number of penguins appear in the town,...

No matter when Miyazaki decides to step down permanently (never probably), the spirit of Studio Ghibli is bound to live forever, with the impact the company and the Japanese master’s productions had and continue having being visible quite frequently in the whole spectrum of the anime world. “Penguin Highway” is a testament to the fact.

“Penguin Highway” is screening at Anime Film Festival 2019

The story is based on the homonymous novel by Tomihiko Morimi, whose works include “Night is Short, Walk on Girl” and “The Eccentric Family” and revolves around Aoyama, a schoolboy who is very bright, headstrong, and with the general, inquisitive mentality of a true scientist. As fourth grade has just ended and summer vacations are upon him, he has to face a number of adventures.

The first one comes from a rather unusual event, since a number of penguins appear in the town, all of which...

Something is piping small, cat-sized penguins into the middle of a small-town field in “Penguin Highway,” an irresistibly out-there mystery that plays like a cross between “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Stranger Things,” if either of those influences’ sense of horror were replaced with wonder, and their weird happenings took place in broad daylight rather than more atmospheric darkness. Here, while most of the locals scratch their head in puzzlement, a booksmart kid named Aoyama (Kana Kita) has half a dozen hypotheses — perhaps they’re abandoned pets, or maybe they’re crows “that have undergone a sudden mutation to become fat” — and takes it upon himself to investigate.

An impressive first feature from director Hiroyasu Ishida, “Penguin Highway” sticks to the big-eyed, fine-limbed aesthetic seen in most adult-targeted anime, but fleshes out the characters at the screenplay level, such that the entire enterprise stands apart — a notch better...

Adapted from Tomihiko Morimi’s Nihon Science Fiction Taisho Award-winning novel from 2010, Penguin Highway takes us into a world barely unlike our own. Directed by Hiroyasu Ishida from Makoto Ueda’s script, the film centers upon a Japanese fourth grader on the cusp of self-proclaimed greatness. With just under four thousand days until adulthood and his first Nobel Prize (he calculated it himself), nothing can peel Aoyama’s (Kana Kita) precocious interest from new, mysterious experimentations besides his crush: the town’s pretty dental hygienist he refers to as “The Lady” (Yû Aoi). She takes his affection in stride by chastising his infatuation with her breasts (the blatant lecherous gaze of children in recent anime is disturbing) and always looks forward to his company on the other side of a chessboard.

It’s almost serendipitous then that Aoyama’s latest scientific quandary concerns her too. Penguins have suddenly arrived in their fields,...

No matter when Miyazaki decide to step down permanently (never probably), the spirit of Studio Ghibli is bound to live forever, with the impact the company and the Japanese master’s productions had and continue having being visible quite frequently in the whole spectrum of the anime world. “Penguin Highway” is a testament to the fact.

“Penguin Highway” is part of the Asian selection at Fantasia International Film Festival

The story is based on the homonymous novel by Tomihiko Morimi, whose works include “Night is Short, Walk on Girl” and “The Eccentric Family” and revolves around Aoyama, a schoolboy who is very bright, headstrong, and with the general, inquisitive mentality of a true scientist. As fourth grade has just ended and summer vacations are upon him, he has to face a number of adventures.

The first one comes from a rather unusual event, since a number of penguins appear in the town,...