sign in sign up
<<
Home , Asread, Demon City Shinjuku, Mamoru Hosoda, Millennium Actress, Ninja Scroll, Osamu Dezaki

Issue #8, November 2015

1 Jose Sanchez was born and raised in Miami, Florida on March 10,1968,where he still lives today with his wife Aliana. At the age of six, he was introduced to fingerpainting. By first grade, he had picked up his first pencil, but it was not until the summer of 1977 when hit the movie screens across America, that his imaginative spark was truly ignited! Like so many other people that were influenced by the cult phenomenon, he was too. So much so, that this led him to seriously explore and develop his talent for creating art further. As time has gone by and he has honed his skills, he has been notably influenced by the works of Science Fiction and Fantasy artists such as: Stephen Youll, Donato Giancola, Chris Moore, Tim White, Jim Burns, David B. Mattingly and Michael Whelan, to name but a few.

He attended Lindsey-Hopkins Technical Education Education Center in Miami, Florida where he received a certificate in Commercial Art Technology-majoring in illustration and minoring in Graphic Design. Jose would ideally like to see himself one day working professionally in the motion picture industry as a Concept Artist. He had previously worked on a low- budget SF/Super Hero Animation flick titled: "Shadow Runner", designing the individual character's spaceships. "They tend to depend more on technology than they do on their own superpowers". He is also interested in the publication and gaming markets. To one of his many credits, which have included several covers and one semi-prozine cover and interior artwork.

Also appearing in the official LucasFilm Star Wars Insider : "City Patrol", was chosen for publication in the March/April 2006/issue #86.

“Oil Bath”, “Artoo”, “Pair of Jawas” and “Land of the Rising Suns” in April 2014/issue #148 now being published by Titan Publications and online at starwars.com on the Jan.15,2014 article: Bantha Tracks: Best of the Year, Online edition: “AT-AT Driver” and in the Blog article: Bantha Tracks: Art Galaxy, March 2014 “ Djas Puhr-Settling The Score!”

Much of his art can be currently seen at efanzines.com. 2 Contents Letters of Comment • 4 Sasquan Con Report • 6 Con Report: Kumoricon & Portland Retro Gaming Expo • 14 Photographs! • 18 204: Directors I Know On Sight • 24 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 28 • 29 • 30

Breaking It All Down: The ‘Zine – is edited and written by Alexander Case. Letters of Comment can be sent to [email protected]. If you’ve never sent a LoC to me before, please put “LoC:” at the start of the subject line, so it gets filed in the right place. I also sporadically appear on the Bureau42 Greatest Tournament podcast, available through the Bureau42 Master Podcast Audio Feed, which can be found on iTunes and Stitcher. My YouTube Channel, where the web-series that this fanzine is spun off from. can be found at http://www. .com/user/CountZeroOr 3 Letters of Comment A handful of LOCs, and one of them spurred an article, so that’s awesome. We have a first-time LOC (at least to this fanzine) from Allan Maurer:

Hi Alexander,

Regarding the piece on the Ackermonster doc: A lot of what I’ve seen about Forry since his death has been one-sided. He more or less introduced me and legions of others to with Famous Monsters and Spacemen, was at least partly responsible for cos-play, funded Ray Bradbury’s trip to the first Worldcon and otherwise helped shape fandom. But as much as I like FJA, and I do, it would be interesting to see a probing biography of the man that also deals with his many fannish feuds, his difficulties with Robert A. Heinlein, the lawsuit over FM, and the ultimate dispersal of his marvelous collection, his fondness for taking nude photos of young women, his endless parties, and so on. He was certainly of considerable cultural significance and worth considering in that light, but with all his peculiarities intact.

On another topic, Taral Wayne briefly discussed Miyazaki, whom I discovered only when TCM did a special showing of all his films (up to then) in both English and dubbed versions. His work is really the only Japanese animation I’ve enjoyed, but it’s something of an outlier, isn’t it? I mean, it’s superior film-making, period. It stands out as major cinema.

I have not seen enough other Anime to know what to compare Miyazaki with. Any suggestions for work of similar quality or kind to take a look at?

Best,

Allan

Thank you very much from your letter. When I asked Allen about whether they were interested in directors with a style similar to Miyazaki or ones with their own unique style, the response was he was interested in both – so, Allen, you’re going to get your question answered on that this issue – I hope you enjoy the article. As far as Forry goes – I would also like to see a more candid biography or documentary on Forry. I noticed that while some of Forry’s feuds were covered in the documentary (in particular his feuds with H.P.L. and with Harlan Ellison), they were generally covered in such a fashion that Forry was shown in a better light than whoever he was feuding with, and his difficulties with Heinlein weren’t mentioned at all. The next is from the Incomparable Lloyd Penny: Dear Alex:

Thank you for Breaking It All Down 7, and there’s got to be something in here to comment on. Let me have a look, I am sure it’s there...

Like Taral, I am not into anime or video games, as that means there’s much in your zine I can’t really comment on. The best thing is, there are other things to comment on, and that’s what we do.

My loc...well, the Puppies didn’t have the impact they were hoping for re the Hugos. They could stuff the ballot box all they wanted, but they couldn’t control the outcome. Some were unfortunately hurt by the various No Award results, so they did have some impact, and not what they were hoping for.

We did have our tables at ConBravo in Hamilton, and Unplugged Expo in Mississauga. ConBravo sales were poor, and Unplugged Expo sales were nearly non-existent. We will be looking into dedicated craft shows in the Toronto area to see if we can find better markets.

I had seen the terms onmyoji, kami and yokai before, so the explanations here are useful. Many thanks!

4 I seem to recall The Ackermonster Chronicles as something shown on the Buffalo PBS station. I think it was a fun watch, but as you say, there was so much more that could have been put into it. Great to see, but could have been better.

Done for now, many thanks, see you with the next one! Hope there will be plenty more.

Yours, Lloyd Penney. It’s always great to hear from you, even if there are chunks you can’t necessarily comment on. It’s a bummer that the ConBravo sales were poor – I’d heard some good things about the con, and several of the other video producers I follow go to the convention (particularly Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug – who I mentioned in the Internet Critic column I wrote – and Nash Bozard, who does a show reviewing fantasy film), and they’d sung the praises of the con. Hopefully the con reports this issue will give you something more in-depth to comment about. Finally, from Jerry Kaufman – who helped get me into writing my fanzine: I just got around to reading BIAD, and wanted to say congratulations on graduating - are you thinking of going for a higher degree?

I didn’t see many movies this past summer, but Mad Max: Fury Road was one. I loved The Road Warrior and have watched it more than once (the first and third movies were interesting but not ones I’m likely to sit through again - though I have seen a few segments of Beyond Thunderdome when it turns up on TV). I was totally enthralled by the sets, costume design, and general look of Fury Road, and the action was entertaining. However, overall, it didn’t make a lasting impression the way Mad Max did. I attribute this to being older - the more I live, the less impressive new experiences are.

I read your overview of Madoka Magica and its predecessors in the “” . It was interesting in a disinterested way - I’m not likely to get hooked on anime, but if I do, I’ll have Breaking it all Down as a guide.

However, I did skip the “Video Game Primer.”

I do look forward to your next issue, to see what movies you’ve watched and happens next in your post-college career. And Suzle and will be at Orycon, so we’ll see you there.

Yours,

Jerry

Thank you very much for the letter. As it stands, I’m going to stand with the Bachelor’s Degree for now – I’d like to shave down some of that college debt before I go rushing back into the breach. I’m really looking forward to the full-bells-and-whistles Blu-Ray release of Fury Road, with the planned alternate Black & White and Silent Film versions of the film. I’m interested in seeing how the change in presentation changes the film. The anime overview articles are, basically, meant to be just as you said, a guide. Hopefully, if anyone reading this feels like sticking their toe into the swimming hole of anime, these articles will give them a great place to go deeper. No video game primer this issue, so you don’t have to worry about skipping over that bit when printing this issue.

5 Sasquan Con Report I meant to put this con report together a while back, but a whole bunch of stuff got in the way. I have the time to put this article together now, though some of my memories of the con itself have faded a little. Fortunately, I took a bunch of notes, though I slacked on some areas more than others. If I met you and forgot to mention our meeting at the con, I beg your forgiveness. I left for the con the day before – as I was driving, and I knew I’d be arriving in the evening. I knew before departing that there had been some bad wildfires in Eastern Oregon and Washington, but I didn’t quite realize how bad they were. There was a constant haze along my drive, and I had to keep the air in the car either circulating internally, or to use the air conditioning, as the outside air for the entire drive was incredibly smoky. Fortunately, the hotel I was staying at had a sky- to the convention center, which made it easy to go between the hotel and the convention without stepping outside. Other than that, my only real thing of note for day zero was the fact that Joe Haldeman was behind me in the badge pickup line. The next day I got up a little earlier so I could get breakfast and find the hotel where the “Room Gatherings” (we couldn’t call them room parties) was being held – the Historic Davenport hotel. While navigating the city to find the hotel, I found that Spokane has alot of sky-bridges between buildings. By comparison, Portland, which gets a fair amount of rain, but not as much smoke or much ice, had very few sky-bridges. I thought this was rather odd at the time – but considering how bad the smoke got later, it does make some sense. I was late to the first panel I wanted to go to, which was on “Comfort Food Reading”, which Jo Walton was on. Two years ago, when Among Others was in the running for the for Best Novel (which it won), I ran a video review of it on my show, and Jo Walton or an assistant had posted about it on Walton’s blog, with a link to the reading list I’d asked about in the video (and late in the video, which means that she or an assistant would have had to watch at least most of the video). I also went to the “How the hell did they do that” panel – on con organization through the ages. The opening ceremonies were interesting, and I thought the inclusion of a Native American storyteller in the opening ceremonies was a very nice touch. I also liked the video from the International Space Station, from our absentee special guest Kjell Lindgren, with his having brought a Tribble on board. Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to his absentee panel, nor was I able to record a greeting for Mr. Lindgren. First Night of the Con was also pretty fun. In honor of GoH Leslie Turek there was a free scoop of ice cream per attendee. There were also demonstrations from the local SCA group, and a fun filk concert by Tom Smith and Phil Foglio – which wrapped up a little before Phil had to depart for the live recording of Girl Genius Radio Theater. There were also several food carts in the park as well – including a cart serving Gyros, which was good, as I figured I needed a Gyro. Indeed, I’d been holding out for a Gyro for much of the night. (Wakka, Wakka) I’d previously seen Phil and Kaja Foglio do Girl Genius Radio Theater at Kumoricon several years ago, and had a blast, so I had to make sure to go to this one. This time, they were doing an 8-part epic performance of the duology of the two plays “Six of One…”, and “…a Half Dozen of the Othar.” Rather than the Foglio’s usual cast being present, this time they took auditions from the audience. I auditioned for one of the roles of Othar (there are 6 Othars in the play), and almost got the part, but turned down. Ah, well, that’s show-biz. Following the performance, I went to the Fanzine Lounge at the Historic Davenport, were I met some of the people who are hopefully reading this. On Thursday I started the day off with the walk with the stars, where I got to chat with several of the GoHs – particularly Tom Smith and, briefly, with Vonda N. McIntyre. I checked out a panel on restaurants in Spokane… and I basically didn’t use any information from the panel, aside from going to the Satellite for breakfast

6 The Girl Genius Radio Theater Performance from Day #1 on the rest of the days of the con. There was a neat panel I went to after that on working in the industry, with some particularly interesting stories from Zaza Koshkadze on publishing in Georgia (the country). He sounds like a really interesting author, but going from Goodreads, none of his stuff has been translated into English yet. After this was probably my favorite panel of the convention – and that’s saying a lot, because I went to a lot of great panels. This was the panel on the need for SF magazines for YA audiences. There were several reasons for this. The first was, well, the turnout was low – which was kinda bad because it would have been nice for more people to hear the discussion that happened. However, this meant that the panelists and the people in the audience had a really good discussion. There was Neal Clarke of Clarkesworld on the panel, which was super-awesome because I enjoy reading that . Also, Cassandra Rose Clarke, a SF writer on the panel, read my fanzine, which, I will admit, made me squee. If I got nothing else out of this convention (and I got a lot out of going to Sasquan), it’s that meeting people who read my fanzine is a wonderful experience, and I hope that never gets old. Anyway, the discussion itself was great. The points that we came into a general agreement on, from my notes (which may have omitted information), was that a print magazine would need to work with and schools. It would also probably have to be done by an existing publisher of fiction – whether by a major SF publisher like Tor, or a publisher with an in with schools like Scholastic, or by a publisher who has connections with material frequently read by younger readers, like Viz and their Haikasoru book line. Doing the magazine as a web publication also would have the advantage of making it more economical to deal with some of the costs of running art – which is another thing younger readers like – specifically the printing costs of using high-resolution color art. I unfortunately didn’t stick my head in to the viewing rooms that were showing anime to see what the attendance was in those rooms. I will say that the shows they were screening were some pretty good ones. I realize that I’m getting into Blow-By-Blow, and I’ll try to minimize this some. Friday, I went to the business meeting, and saw the discussion over E Pluribus Hugo and 4 to 6. I didn’t quite get E Pluribus Hugo at first, but I got a bit of a better grasp of it at the next day’s meeting, though I’m not sure how well I could explain it to someone – and I have a background in Technical Writing. 7 There was a discussion also on using electronic voting for amending the WSFS Constitution. This is probably the closest I got to speaking up, but I didn’t get an opportunity to due to limited debate time. There were three main arguments made. The first was that voters who did not attend the meeting would not and could not be informed on the issues enough to be an informed voter. The second point was that slate voting could be used to manipulate the constitution – as things stand you have to be an attending member who is willing to take the time to go to the board meeting over other panels or meet-ups. The third point was that using electronic voting would slow the responsiveness of Worldcon to pressing issues even further. I have no arguments with the third option. Considering how the Hugo voting turned out with the rejection of the slates, I’m iffy on the second point – the Slates got on because the people supporting the slate lock-stepped nominated the works on the slate, as opposed to everyone else who just nominated the stuff they liked, never mind what other people were nominating or telling them to nominate. When the rubber hit the road though, the slates got clobbered, and I suspect the same thing would happen to WSFS amendments. Argument one, though, I had an objection to. My objection is this – the state of Oregon has, for over a decade – since before I was eligible to vote, done absentee voting over in-person voting, and it has managed to avoid some of the utter crap that California has run into with their constitutional amendment process – which is specifically one of the things cited with objection one against electronic absentee voting. Part of how they do this is through the publication by the Oregon Attorney General’s office of the Oregon State Voter’s Pamphlet. This pamphlet contains a list of things up for a vote (ballot measures, candidates, etc.), and then, information to help you make your decision. In the case of candidates, there is information submitted by the candidate as to their qualifications and their positions on various issues. In the case of ballot measures, there is the text of the ballot measure, a plain text description of the ballot measure, and arguments for or against it, submitted by interested parties. For arguments for or against, if I recall correctly groups have to pay a small fee to have their argument included in the voter’s pamphlet, to help cover printing costs. The voter’s pamphlet is then printed and mailed out to each voting household, with a PDF version made available on the state website and at libraries. Theoretically, similar information could be included on the WorldCon web site, with the proposals being voted on. Anyhoo, moving on. I also attended Dave Gerrold’s speech (which was great), on how great SF builds empathy towards our fellow humans and the world. I can’t do it justice and it’s available on Gerrold’s web page. If you have a chance you should definitely check it out. I also went to a panel on Chinese SF, which was… kinda rough. Most of the panelists were great… except for the moderator, Fei Tang. It felt like she hadn’t moderated a panel before, and she would rather have been a panelist so she could present information and her power-points, instead of a moderator with the job of facilitating discussion and keeping things moving. Ken Liu, whose of Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem took home the Best Novel Hugo, basically stepped up and sort of took over as moderator, letting Ms. Tang be more of a panelist, and to present the information she wanted to share. I then went to the masquerade, which was really great. There were a lot of costumes incorporating lights this year, which is rather impressive. When I’d gone to the Masquerade at Kumoricon last year, there wasn’t nearly as much use of light. I also was not able to take any good pictures. I should also mention that Friday had the worst smoke in the air of the entire convention. I took pictures from my hotel room window on Wednesday and Friday, and I’ll make sure to include these in the article. In any case – on Wednesday, I was able to see the hospital on the hill from my window. On Friday, the smoke from the fires had the hospital almost entirely obscured the hospital. By the time of the masquerade, convention center staff had put signs on all exit doors, asking people to not go outside. I attended the business meeting again on Saturday, where I learned that Helsinki won the 2017 Worldcon bid. I’d been hoping Nippon 2017 would win, but from the discussion in the Fanzine Lounge, apparently the Nippon 2007 Worldcon had some problems, particularly related to money management, and there were concerns that people involved in that convention were still involved in the 2017 bid. On the one hand, hearing that felt like 8 The view out of my hotel room on the first day.

The same view on Friday

9 condemning the Nippon ConCom for the sins of the fathers. On the other hand, considering how, close knit Western Worldcon ConComs are, this kinda makes sense. There was a bit that I wish had passed amending the Hugo rules to limit franchises to one work per franchise. Having the Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form category be the “Doctor Who-Plus-Game of Thrones-and-Something-Else” category always kinda bugged me, and it would have been nice to open things up to other works of speculative fiction, whether dramatic podcast series like Welcome to Night Vale, or western animated series like Stephen Universe, or, well, as I’ve discussed before, some anime, would have been nice. Ah well. I then went to the panel on New Space Opera, which was great – and I also managed to get there early enough that I was able to get a nice seat in the front row. I got a whole bunch of authors and books to add to my reading list. Though, to be fair, my Goodreads reading list is currently at 2079, so it may not need the help. After this, of note is my going to the Haikasoru booth, and picking up a whole bunch of books, including Gene Mapper by Taiyo Fujii, and much to my pleasant surprise, the author was at the booth and signed a copy of the book for me. I then got meet him again at the Genre Games panel, where I got to be part of his team for a few parts of the contest. We didn’t win, but we tried our best, but that’s all we could ask for. We went from there to the panel on the Seiun Awards, where Pat Catigan won an award for Best Translated Short Story, and The Martian won Best Novel. This was probably the most time I spent with any one author over the course of the convention, and I think Fujii-san and I hit it off well. I do hope at some point in the future I get to meet him again at a convention, and I’m looking forward to just getting the time to sit down and reading his book. I also watched the Hugo Award ceremony from the screening at Guinan’s specifically the couches just outside. While I have no doubt that it would have been a blast to be in the room, there was something cool about seeing it in Guinan’s with people who I could kind of chat with during the ceremony. Also – I don’t own anything nice to wear to the ceremony. I was also really pleased to see Ben Yalow win the Big Heart Award. As I’ve mentioned previously, were it not for Ben, Suzanne, and Jerry sticking around for the Fanzine panel at Orycon a couple years ago, Breaking It All Down would only be a Youtube series that a few people occasionally watch – I never would have started this fanzine. I skipped out of the con a little early on Sunday, mainly because I was driving and didn’t want to be driving for 4+ hours while tired. General other notes: I got a bunch of books signed – I got my dad’s first paperback printing of The Forever War signed for him, and a bunch of my sister’s Martha Wells books signed for her. As far as I went, I got my first edition copy of David Gerrold’s book on the filming ofThe Trouble with Tribbles signed. I got to join in on a conversation with Jo Walton and a bunch of fans about Anime – particularly the series Hikaru No Go. I poked my head into Auntie’s Books… and determined that living in the town of Powell’s has spoiled me when it comes to bookstores. When it comes to food – Satellite is a good affordable breakfast, Mi Casa is a good Mexican restaurant, and Chicken N’ More is a great soul food restaurant which had, quite possibly, the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

10 The Lobby of the Historic Davinport

From the concert by Tom Smith (with Phil Foglio on art) from First Night

11 The park adjacent to the convention center was a former World's Fair site.

12 From the presentation to Pat Cadigan

Probably the best picture I took with my Cell Phone during the Masquirade.

13 Con Report: Kumoricon & Portland Retro Gaming Expo

The park across the street from the Vancouver Hilton.

I’m combining these two con reports into one, partly because there wasn’t as much to talk about with Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE), and partly because when I was at PRGE, I was paying more attention to some things that would relate to Kumoricon. Kumoricon, this year, was something of a bittersweet affair, as this is Kumoricon’s last year in Vancouver, Washington for quite some time. This is, in part because the convention has outgrown their existing space, and partly because the available space in Vancouver is shrinking. The con itself is split between two hotels – the Vancouver Hilton and the Vancouver Red Lion. Of those, the Vancouver Red Lion is slated for demolition. Reportedly, the plan is for Vancouver to build their own convention center in that space, but in the meantime, this simply means there isn’t enough space in Vancouver anymore to accommodate the amount of space and attendees involved. Instead, next year the convention is being held at the Portland Convention Center, and the date is being moved to Halloween weekend, instead of Labor Day weekend. The con itself was pretty fun – as always I took a whole bunch of cosplay pictures. I also attended a demonstration from a local Kendo club, learned to play a new trading card game – Weiss Schwartz. The structure of the game is interesting – and unfortunately not spelled out well in the rules. Each deck is, effectively, an anime series, and the cards in the game are taken from Anime TV shows. By “attacking” your opponent, you’re escalating the action for their show. The more action escalates, the better cards you can play. However, escalating too far means that your show has jumped the shark meaning that your show is canceled and you lose.

14 From the Kendo Club demonstration

15 I also went to a panel on Gundam plastic models or “GunPla” which, finally, gave me the information I felt I needed to get into building Gundam models. It was kind of interesting to learn about. The recommendation from the panelists was to start not with the “No Grade” models – which cost less money to buy – because those models take more effort and, to a certain degree, cost more to make look good, because they require much more painting to get them to look good. The High grade models cost a little more, but they look better before you get into painting them – and in some cases you don’t have to paint them at all.

The people putting on the GunPla panel brought some demonstration models

16 I also went to a panel on being a better Let’s Player – which was interesting, and will help me do better Let’s Play videos. I’ve been thinking about how I could improve my Let’s Play videos, and this was definitely an educational experience. The other thing of note that I went to was Cosplay Chess. This, as the name suggests, chess done with cosplayers. When captures another, the involved cosplayers do a little vignette showing how one character would take out the other, either on their own, or through another character. Each side also has a cosplayer playing as that side’s “chessmaster”, usually someone who is dressed as a mastermind from one show or another (such as Lelouch from Code Geass, L from , or Char Aznable from Gundam). The game is played less for skill, and more for creating amusing sketches. With Portland Retro Gaming Expo, my focus was less on going to panels and more on figuring out how the new location would fit with some of the things that I think are part of Kumoricon’s con culture. In particular, part of what makes Kumoricon what it is in the park across the street, and what that allows – it allows cosplayers to go outside, to do outside photo shoots, and generally interact more with people, making it something like a public con, instead of having everyone cooped up inside, and having everything basically be insular. The Portland Convention center as a small brick plaza across the street, but that’s the only thing close to that. There is also a park a couple MAX (light rail) stops away, by the hotel that was the previous site for OryCon, and also Lloyd center. However, that’s a fair distances away, and makes it much more separate from the convention center. Additionally, part of this is the fact that in Vancouver there was a Farmer’s Market on Labor Day weekend, with several food carts set up. The carts did good business, and tended to stay open a little later than they would otherwise, during the Con weekend. This brought a lot of business to the food carts, and also, might have even got some people interested in anime – on more than a few occasions, I encountered locals asking me (or other people) about costumes that caught their interest, and after learning the name of the show, stating that they’d check that show out. That, frankly, is a pretty awesome thing. I don’t know if we’ll get anything quite like that at the Convention Center, but we’ll see.

17 Cosplay Photographs!

Asuna and Kirito from Iori Yagami from the King of Fighters fighting games

18 A whole bunch of Deadpools

Lt. Ellen Ripley from Alien. The costume has a knit facehugger on its back.

19 Cloud Strife from VII Lupin III from the series of the same name

20 Ryuuko from Celty Sturluson, a Dullahan, from Durarara

21 Shotaro Kaneda, w/ Laser Rifle, from , Front and Back

22 Lots of characters from Sports anime this year, with characters from Kuroko's Basketball (Left), and Volleyball anime Haikyuu (Right)

23 Anime 204: Directors I Know On Sight There are some anime directors who are chameleons of their craft. They can work in any artistic style and any genre. These directors, like and , if handed an series, or an existing anime series, can adapt that work to the screen, and make it fit perfectly with the existing artistic presentation of that work – making a work that fits exactly with what you expect from the manga or the TV show, while still being a well-crafted work of cinema. The cinematic equivalent of a roadie – if their doing their job right, everything goes off without a hitch and you never even know they were there. This article is not about those directors. This article is about the directors who I’d describe as the anime equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick, a John Woo, or a Quentin Tarantino – directors who leave an indelible fingerprint on the screen, and while they may stumble occasionally, their work is always recognizable.

The title character from Hayao Miyazaki's .

Hayao Miyazaki Miyazaki is probably the ur-example of this kind of director. His own artistic style is one has gone beyond his own work to the films of as a whole. This dates back to his time working with Movie Shuensha (or TMS), and with studio on shows like the original Lupin III, and the second Lupin III film – Castle of Cagliostro. Miyazaki’s episodes generally stood out above and beyond those of other directors, both in terms of visual style, but also the tone of the narrative. While in Castle of Cagliostro, the main character – Arsine Lupin III – still had some of the somewhat buffoonish slapstick that he had in the show (getting conked on the noggin by a tree branch earlier in the film, or pursuit of a firework rocket he planned to use to help cross a gap between two buildings leading to his leaping the gap instead, etc.) he’s a much more serious character than he is the hands of other directors, and a much more elegant and suave character than he was in the original manga. The film’s female lead looks much more like many of Miyazaki’s other female leads, and Lupin’s on-again, off-again love interest/rival Fujiko Mine is much less of the femme fatale than she is in the TV show or manga. 24 Castle of Cagliostro also shows a bunch of other significant elements that would lead into his other work. The setting of the film is very pastoral, and also very nostalgic. There are a lot of rolling hills, farmland, and countryside. The film is also set over a decade before the film was made – in the 1960s. This carries over into his later films – the only Miyazaki films that really spend any significant amount of the film’s runtime in a city of any kind is Kiki’s Delivery Service. Other films may spend a portion of the film in a city (the title character Porcoof Rosso goes to a city to have his plane overhauled, some time is spent in cities in Howl’s Moving Castle), but the majority of his films are set in the countryside and only one film istechnically set in the present day – – but the majority of the film’s events are set in a world that is feels much older – like a turn-of-the-20th-century resort bathhouse frozen in time (which also happens to cater to Yokai and Kami of various stripes).

Pormotional Art for Mamoru Hosoda There has been a lot of debate over who “the next Miyazaki” will be. High up there on the list of contenders is Mamoru Hosoda. Hosoda started out as an key animator with , having worked on major anime series such as Sailor Moon and Z, before moving on to direct the first two films based on the popular video game franchise. These films – and Digimon Adventure: Our War Game, were later edited together into one film, titledDigmon: The Movie for a US release. However, starting in the mid-to-late 2000s, with , Hosoda finally started to step into his own. With Studio , Hosodoa directed the filmThe Girl Who Leapt Through Time, based on a science fiction novel from the same writer as Paprika (which we’ll get into in a bit when we talk about Satoshi Kon). The Girl Who Leapt Through Time followed Makoto Konno, a high school girl who, through a mishap, develops the ability to travel backwards through time after engaging in a running jump. Her use of the powers starts out with the mundane (her younger brother eats her pudding, so she travels back in time so she can eat it first), but she escalates her use of the power to excel in school, and when her friends start resenting her sudden change in school performance (and her blasé attitude to it), she starts trying to help them too, with ever escalating consequences that she has to deal with.

25 While the film was an adaptation from a novel, the presentation of the story starts to show Hosoda’s distinct art style – particularly with the character designs. While the designs were themselves done by – who previously worked on , and has worked with Hosoda on his other three films – Sadamoto’s work exists to bring the director’s vision to life. However, aside from the visuals, what makes Hosada’s work distinct is his particular narrative focus. Hosoda’s work tends to focus very strongly on interpersonal relationships – either between circles of close friends, as in Girl Who Leapt Through Time, or through families in his two later works that have seen US release – Summer Wars and Wolf Children. In Summer Wars, the film follows a high school boy, Kenji Koiso, who is going to meet his girlfriend’s extended family during summer break. Over the course of the break, the world is threatened by an artificially intelligent virus called “Love Machine”, and Kenji, his girlfriend Natsuki Shinohara, and her family, end up working together to help defeat the virus and save the internet. While the virus plotline itself provides the action for the film, the real focus of the film is Kenji meeting, getting to know, and bonding with the Shinohara family over dealing with this crisis, while the film, which had a story written by Hosoda, focuses on the ties of family. Hosoda’s third feature length film, and his most recent one to get a US release moves into this even further. Wolf Children, Hosoda’s first film with his own studio, and one which he co-wrote the screenplay on - in addition to writing the story and directing the film, is a story of a woman, Hana, who falls in love with a man who can turn into a wolf. After the man is killed by being hit by a car while in wolf form, Hana discovers she’s pregnant, and gives birth to fraternal twins. The twins then, as children, start to manifest the ability to transform themselves, causing Hana to move to the countryside so that her children can be safe – and she tries to raise them on her own, while also dealing with their dual wolf-human nature. To be absolutely blunt, Wolf Children is a film that is very well written and gorgeously animated, and it’s a goddamned crime that this film did not get a nomination for Best Animated Feature when the film came out in 2012. Also, on a slightly unrelated note, at Kumoricon this year, someone entered an AMV () for Wolf Children using “Two Worlds” by Phil Collins as the song, and how that song fit Wolf Children just as well as it did in Tarzan.

Makoto Shinkai Shinkai is an odd case in anime – a director who was an auteur from the very beginning. After doing animated cutscenes for video games put out by game developer Falcom (best known for the Ys series of games), he started making his own short films, starting with the filmOther Worlds and She and Her Cat before getting considerable international recognition for his filmVoices of a Distant Star in 2002. These three films pretty much lay out the recurring themes of most of Shinkai’s work – communication within relationships, and in particular themes of unrequited love and love separated by distance and time. Voices of a Distant Star and She and Her Cat were released together on DVD in the US, and that DVD was one of the first three anime I purchased. The latter story is a narrative from the perspective of a woman’s pet cat, who loves his human, but because he is a cat cannot express how he feels, and so has to try to find alternate ways to get this across. Voices of a Distant Star is his first SFnal film. It follows a boy, Noboru, and girl, Mikado (originally voiced by the director and his girlfriend, respectively, and later by professional voice actors once the film was picked up for major commercial distribution). When earth goes to war with an alien race, Mikado is selected to be a giant robot pilot. The two friends, who are quite close, agree to stay in touch, but because Mikado’s ship will be travelling using a FTL drive, any communications she sends back to him will take years to arrive, and vice-versa. The work is interesting in multiple respects. First it’s a reversal of the old “man goes to war, woman left to wait” narrative – with

26 Promotional art for The Place Promised In Our Early Days

the factor of time dilation meaning that Noboru is left waiting for years. Second, when I say Shinkai is an auteur, I don’t just mean in the sense that this film is the product of one person’s vision. I mean that in the sense that this film is the product of one person’s work - the only person other than Shinkai to work on the original release of the film was Shinkai’s girlfriend. Shinkai storyboarded and animated the film basically by himself on his PowerMac G4. The short got the attention of several animation studios, and Shinkai’s next project – A Place Promised in our Early Days, was a feature length film, directed by Shinkai and animated by Studio Asread. The film is an alternate history piece set in a that was split between the US and the Soviet Union following World War II much as Germany was split following World War II. The main characters are three teens in Soviet occupied Hokkaido – a girl, Sayuri, and two boys, Hiroki and Takuya. When Sayuri starts to develop narcolepsy due to a Soviet experiment near the city, they end up being separated. Over the course of several years, the two boys try to discover what happened to Sayuri, and how to stop the experiment, while coming to terms with their feelings for Sayuri, and her feelings for them. Shinkai’s next work is less SFnal, by which I mean not a work of SF at all. 5cm Per Second, follows two friends, Takaki Tonou and Akari Shinohara, who are friends in grade and middle school who end up falling for each other, but become separated, first by distance, and eventually time as the long-distance relationship goes on and on without any new meetings.

27 Shinkai returned to speculative fiction with a fantasy film,Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a fully computer animated film which I’d describe almost as Shinkai’s take on the story of Orpheus. It follows a high school girl, Asuna, who ends up travelling to the land of the dead (sort of) to find her dead father – encountering other characters who are also seeking to be reunited with their deceased loved ones. Shinkai’s most recent film to date isGarden of Words, another non-SF film. This time the film follows an aspiring shoemaker who falls in love with a schoolteacher when they meet in a park during the rain. Aside from the separation of years and the barriers of society – the shoemaker, Takao, is a 15-year-old high school student, and the teacher, Yukari is 27, though she doesn’t teach at his school – Shinkai also wanted to focus on how even though someone is an “adult” they are not necessarily emotionally mature (and vice versa). Yoshiaki Kawajiri Moving out of directors who are compared to Miyazaki, we come to directors with a very distinct visual style, even if the material they prefer, and their directorial voice, could not be any more different from Miyazaki’s style. If Miyazaki could be compared to Terrence Malick, or Stephen Spielberg, then Kawajiri is Ridley Scott or John Woo. Kawajiri’s style is all about stylized action, a strong sense of speed, and an unnerving creepy atmosphere.

From : Bloodlust Kawajiri himself tends to handle character design for his films himself, though there are some exceptions – such as his filmVampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which was based on the Vampire Hunter D novels, which were illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. If I was to list three films that encapsulate Kawajiri’s style in their entirety, they would be the aforementioned Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, the direct-to-video filmDemon City Shinjuku, and Scroll. They each have strongly done, dynamic and exciting action sequences, especially . They each have horrific monsters, beautiful heroes and villains – and some monstrous people serving those villains, and bloody violence. In the , this lead to a lot of appeal for fans discovering the medium of anime for the first time, and Ninja Scroll in particular became many people’s gateway film to Japanese animation. was one of mine. Kawajiri’s success has, also, been something of a curse. Much as Miyazaki’s style has become the de facto house style of Studio Ghibli, Kawajiri’s style has become the almost de facto house style of Studio Madhouse, when used for works where there aren’t an existing style to work off of (such as the boxing series or the action series ). I’d compare the similarity to how in the 1960s and 70s, in Marvel comics, other artists would continue to replicate Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko’s style, with some time passing before we got artists stepping up to put their own twist on the universe they helped visually create, like Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Jim Steranko, and Bill Sienkiewicz. This has meant that a lot of the visual traits that made Kawajiri’s style unique have, unfortunately, become something of a cliché, or have been embellished on by other directors.

28 From Satoshi Kon's Paprika Satoshi Kon Satoshi Kon is a tragic case here, as Kon’s career was, quite possibly, cut short in its prime. Kon got started as an assistant to , creator of Akira. In manga work, the job of the Assistant is to draw some backgrounds, handle inking and, in some cases, lettering and touch-up. This helped Kon get a grasp of Otomo’s directorial style, so when Otomo shifted from manga to Animation with Robot Carnival, NeoTokyo, and Akira, as well as working on Mamoru Oshii’s filmPatlabor 2. Kon came with him as a key animator and animation director. Kon eventually stepped into the directorial chair with the filmPerfect Blue. Based on the novel, the film follows, Mima Kirogoe, a pop idol who shifts her career into acting with a direct-to-video thriller series of films. As filming goes on, she finds herself being harassed by a stalker, and the lines between fantasy and reality getting blurred. Kon’s next filmMillennium Actress, is based around a story-within-a-story. A documentary filmmaker, Genya Tachibana, meets with an aging actress, Chiyoko Fujiwara, who discusses the rise of her career, and a person who she fell in love with early in her career, during World War II. As Fujiwara tells the story, Tachibana envisions the events in his mind’s eye, to a certain degree in the context of her films. Both of these films, through the visuals and the narrative (or both in the case of ), contain strong elements of the mixing of Fantasy and Reality. However, Kon’s two works after his next film Tokyo( Godfathers) take things to a much bigger extent. These are only TV series – , and his final film,Paprika . Paranoia Agent contains a series of interlocking narratives related to people encountering and reacting to a mysterious figure known as “Shonen Bat” (or “Lil Slugger” in the English Dub). Slugger is a young man with a bent aluminum baseball bat, a crooked baseball cap, and roller skates, who first attacks a character designer for an animated TV series, and then a bunch of other people, beating them to the brink of death. These people are in no way connected, aside from being attacked at a point of great psychological stress. Two police detectives attempt to get to the bottom of these attacks, risking their careers and their lives along the way – with even greater risks to be found as their investigation goes on.

29 Paprika, as I mentioned above, is based on a novel. It follows Doctor Atsuko Chiba, who is part of a team of researchers who invented the DC Mini, a device that lets people dive into another person’s dreams. Dr. Chiba has, on the side, started secretly been using the DC Mini to do psychiatric counseling, using the persona of a woman known as “Paprika”. As the film goes on, it’s revealed one of the high-ranking staff at the institute that developed the DC Mini, and is causing the boundaries reality and the dream world to weaken. It’s up to Chiba, her co-workers, and a detective who is one of her clients to find the person responsible. Sadly, Kon passed away in 2006 of pancreatic cancer, with his next film,Dreaming Machine still incomplete.

From Ghost in the Shell 2 Mamoru Oshii Oshii is kind of a weird duck when it comes to his visual style. Oshii, in his later work, is unquestionably recognizable. Oshii is harder to find in his earlier work though. Oshii started his career, as many of the people I’ve discussed thus far, as an animator and storyboard artist on a whole slew of comedy series, before taking on a directorial role on the anime adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi’s manga Urusei Yatsura. Basically, Oshii was a very good, if somewhat conventional, comedy director, until he started getting into directing movies. At which point the visual style that Oshii has become best known for started moving to the forefront – slow atmospheric scenes in-between tightly paced action scenes. This is probably best represented by Oshii’s two Patlabor films, and the film that got him international acclaim Ghost– in the Shell. However, his films after this point also, frankly, lost pretty much any comedic aspects that they had. Patlabor 1 has a few funny scenes, as his filmGosenzo-Sama Banbanzai! which is borderline surrealistic. After that, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that Oshii has not directed a single work of comedic animation. He’s occasionally written works of comedy to be directed by other writers (including episodes of the Patlabor TV series), and he’s included comedy in his live-action films, which he’s almost exclusively worked in since his last feature film – The Sky Climbers.

30 Looking at Oshii’s career and his work, it feels like Oshii is a director who has desperately want to be taken seriously by the world, and who has come to the conclusion that he can’t be considered a Real Director first if he does comedy, and second if he does animation. This is particularly something of a bummer as, going from his live action work, he’s actually rather failed to make the transition from live-action to animation successfully. There are visuals he wants to do, and stories he wants to tell that, going from what’s on screen, could certainly be done, almost with ease, if he did them in animation, but he’s just not quite able to pull them off in live action, whether due to lack of budget, lack of experience, or both. These are just six directors who directly come to mind – not including some smaller studios like who have a very distinct house voice, or directors who have worked more predominantly in television over film. I could probably do a whole bunch of other articles about those directors, writers, and studios – and I probably will in the future.

From Mamoru Oshii's short filmJe t'aime

31