Behind The Nihon Review

You are browsing the archives of 2012 July.

When I picked up Kokoro Connect, I was interested in it because I thought it would be a romance comedy of possibly epic shits and giggles. The setup is perfect: an uneven number of boys to girls, body switching between different genders, and a high school setting. Imagine all the delicious romantic drama that could [...]

Our Spring 2012 First Thoughts article demonstrated how powerful first impressions can be: as long-time commenter Flash Sword Irene pointed out, there was an unusually large number of As and Bs, but a high chance that some of the shows would turn out less worthy of their initial grades. In comparison, this season’s shows seem [...]

Sato Tatsuo, director of classic anime series such as Martian Successor Nadesico, Uchuu no Stellvia, and the TV version of Ninja Scrolls, as well as recent shows Mouretsu Space Pirates and Rinne no Lagrange, is an industry veteran that has quite an impressive resume of work behind him. Capitalizing on some of his newer series, [...]

Though certainly the less experienced of the two musical guests this year, LiSA certainly didn’t come to Anime Expo 2012 without a pre-established local fanbase. Despite her short discography, she’s already sung pieces for extremely popular anime, starting with Angel Beats, where she served as the singing voice of Yui. After moving on her first [...]

The creative team at Madhouse behind Chihayafuru — director Asaka Morio, character designer/chief animation director Hamada Kunihiko and animation producer Tsunoki Takuya — came to Anime Expo to chat about the show and some of their other work.