Dvd nick biography of a determined manga
•
50 key anime films
1. The Spider and the Tulip
Masaoka Kenzo, 1943; on DVD
An early pioneer of Japanese animation, Masaoka Kenzo advanced the art and craft of anime across 27 films from The Sea Palace (1927) to Tora-chan and the insekt (1950); he was the first to use both cel animation and recorded sound. His skills are on wonderful display in this 16-minute adaptation of Yokoyama Michiko’s fairytale, his greatest work. With a visual style borrowed from both Disney and Fleischer Studios (the home of Popeye and Betty Boop), this simple story of a ladybird attempting to evade the clutches of a hungry spider – with the aid of the titelbärare Tulip – is genuinely entertaining comic fare, reminiscerande of Tom and Jerry cartoons. But like some of its contemporaneous Western counterparts, it’s also an uncomfortable watch in racial terms – the spider that menaces the änglalik Japanese ladybird is a distinct African-American caricature.
— Darren Ashmore
2. Momotaro: Sacred Sailors
•
History of anime
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1917. The history of anime dates back to the early 20th century, with Japan producing its first animated films in the 1910s, influenced by Western animation techniques. However, it was not until the 1960s, with the work of Osamu Tezuka, often called the "God of Manga," that anime began to take shape as a distinct cultural phenomenon. Tezuka's *Astro Boy* (1963) is considered one of the first major anime TV series, setting the foundation for the animation industry. Over the following decades, anime grew in popularity both domestically and internationally, with diverse genres and styles emerging. By the 1980s and 1990s, anime had become a global phenomenon, with influential works such as *Akira*, *Dragon Ball*, and *Sailor Moon* reaching international audiences. Today, anime is a major part of global pop culture, known for its unique art styles
•
Kagetora is a handsome young ninja whose sole focus in life is to protect Princess Beni (the Red Princess) as her bodyguard. But both their lives are upended when they fall into a lake, and Kagetora finds himself timewarped into a future where he meets what he believes to be his princess, but who is in actuality her granddaughter, Beni Fujiwara, who bears an uncanny resemblance to her. He arrives in the nick of time, and rescues her from an attempted suicide, at the beginning of Shoku Conami's Shinobi Life. Kagetora becomes accepted as Beni's new bodyguard. Apparently as the only child of a wealthy man, she is frequently subjected to being kidnapped, and is in great need of one. Beni realizes that Kagetora has her confused with her grandmother even as, to her amazement, she realizes that he is from another time. But she is also falling in love with him, and cannot bear to tell him the truth – that she is not Beni-hime, but simply B