“It was the best of shows. It was the worst of shows. Whenever I had to cover my tracks, I simply called it Schoolgirl Milky Crisis…”

So begins Jonathan Clements personal journey into the world of Anime and Manga, and much more besides!

A fluent student of the Japanese language, Jonathan was thrust into the world of Anime behind the scenes before he’d even completed his course. His regular columns and articles for Manga Max, Newtype USA, and Judge Dredd magazine, amongst many other titles and formats, have opened up the world of Anime from behind-the-scenes. Well, sort of…

His features are entertaining, well written, and manage to be inclusive to those with little knowledge of Manga and Anime, without patronising the rest. From interviews, to profiles, reviews, commentary, lectures, essays and even experiences – it’s all dealt out with a light but well-informed touch.

There’s the time he met Tomo, the Anime voice actress; the slightly bewildering interview with Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshii; and views and information on how Anime is produced and marketed to the world, not to mention plenty of insider gossip, of course!

The only thing is that Schoolgirl Milky Crisis pseudonym – sometimes you’d just wish he’d dish the dirt! Come on, surely now you can tell us exactly which director or anime you were talking about? But no, not one word. Mind you, as someone so heavily involved in the industry, as a translator, critic and (occasional) voice actor, I guess you can’t blame him for that.

For a collection of articles, the book has been well edited and paced – grouping chapters and themes without much repetition in subjects. Snapshots begat longer articles and essays, then are followed by a few bite-sized chunks. Often it’s engaging enough to wish he’d work on something far greater in length, but some of the longer, more serious articles don’t share the charm of his personal experiences. One particularly unimpressive example being the chapter on Chinese animation – it just feels like a regurgitation of the (albeit well-researched) facts, somehow lacking in personality.

On the whole, though, this is a fine, entertaining piece of work.

And don’t forget, there’s still a chance to win one of three copies of this book – click here to enter!

A solid, fun introduction to the mad world of Hong Kong cinema…

There’s an air of ladism about Sex and Zen. A definite readiness to discuss topics such as the size of Amy Yip’s yams. Dig a little deeper, and you often find a far more sensitive side, well aware of cultural background. That there are more than 10 contibuting writers to this publication goes a long way to explaining it’s schizophrenia.

Written in 1996, author/editors Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins centre on the ‘golden age’ of Hong Kong cinema, when it really came into it’s own. The decade between 1983 and 1993, when John Woo, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and Jackie Chan truly came to prominence. It even has separate chapters devoted to the above stars, and tries very hard to break up movie reviews into chapters by genre – not always the best idea with Hong Kong films. There’s also a chapter devoted to the Shaw Brothers.

By no means a comprehensive guide – the prolific output from Hong Kong, third largest in the world after Hollywood and Bombay, would make that impossible – it gives a sizable, informative lowdown on many of the major films you should know about. Highlighting a few that often slip through the net, such as the brilliant Rouge and rollercoaster ride of The Seventh Curse. It also intercedes an amusing feature on ‘hex errors’, or rather bad, baffling, subtitles. As well as outlining several of the filmmakers and actors along the way. Making this a solid first port of call to anyone looking to explore Asian movies further.

There are weaknesses, for instance some glaring omissions are made. Such as Ching Sui-ting’s Duel To The Death, in many respects just as important to the development of Hong Kong cinema in the early eighties as Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors From Magic Mountain. Nor does the book deliberately limit itself to the eighties and nineties. It just happens to have been the majority of what the authors have been exposed to, being far more widely available than earlier examples (such as those by King Hu, who is only mentioned once in discussing the remake of his Dragon Inn). This is a flaw not only here, but with nearly all books dealing with Hong Kong cinema. Few (outside of Hong Kong itself) give any proper overview of cinema before the mid 70s, therefore missing out on much of the influences behind movies. Such as the abundance of wuxia, Crouching Tiger genre films in the 60s.

That aside this is a good starting point for anyone beginning to get interested in Asian movies.

The groundbreaking manga that influenced generation upon generation of comic book creators and inspired the notorious ‘Baby Cart’ series that began with Shogun Assassin…

Most martial arts and kung fu movie fans fondly remember the Lone Wolf and Cub series from the early seventies, manga faithfully brought to the screen by Kenji Misumi, who also directed the original Zatoichi series in the sixties recently stylishly updated by Takeshi Kitano. Their cult following includes Quentin Tarentino, and has particular pertinence in the UK where an edited version of the first two films, Shogun Assassin, was classed as a video nasty alongside the likes of Driller Killer and Cannibal Ferox. Though violent it was neither the art nor full-on exploitation of those other films. Undoubtedly it was the exposure of Lone Wolf’s son, the ‘cub’ in question, to extreme violence that made censors hearts race. But then that was rather the point.

Writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima’s long running serialised manga is just as violent as it’s screen counterpart. More than 30 years after it was originally published, this groundbreaking experiment in comic book narrative literally explodes from the boundaries from the page, and still soars above modern day equivalents. Influencing generation after generation of artists not just in Japan, but also worldwide including Dark Knight creator Frank Miller and Brian Michael Bendis, writer artist of Jinx and Goldfish. Its filmic approach had a considerable impact on a medium then still, ironically, propelled by words rather than pictures to force narrative. Stories would run for pages with little more than a grunt or two for dialogue, unthinkable in Western comics where even less verbal characters like the Hulk might spend most of an issue talking to himself (albeit in a childlike fashion).

But then by American standards, Koike and Kojima’s creation was leagues ahead of anything that was happening commercial comics in the early seventies. In Japan, where content wasn’t restricted from mature content or readers expectations of superheroes, Lone Wolf found a way to venture into new territory. Kojima’s art may have had the expressive characters of Neal Adams, the creative layouts of Jim Sterenko, but went so much further than they could have dreamed. It wasn’t until Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons – two Brits – created Watchmen in the eighties that anything of this kind or scale could be seen in America outside of the independents. And that was one of the first comics from the majors to be aimed at ‘mature readers’ there, and definitely the one that opened the floodgates for more to come.

Even though such restrictions never applied in Japan, Lone Wolf was still something very special. A painstakingly researched recreation of the Edo period in Japan, it tells of a disgraced Shogun executioner Ogami Itto. Once responsible for delivering the mercy cut when samurai’s took their life and beheading them, he now roams the countryside of Japan with his son in a baby cart. Now a ronin – a rogue masterless samurai – the cart bears the displays the insignia ‘Son for hire, sword for hire’. His price 500 ryo.

The influence of Akira Kurosawa carries heavily on the character of Lone Wolf, like a later day version of Yojimbo, mysterious and enigmatic. The same character played by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s remake A Fistful of Dollars, which Clint went on to play in almost every role he’s taken since. It’s only much later we come to understand how this powerful, honourable figure became an assassin. His ongoing search for vengeance against Retsudo of the Ura-Yagyu clan, responsible for treacherous plan that saw him fall from grace and his wife murdered. Kojima was such a fan of Kurosawa the character even resembled the director’s favourite lead Toshiro Mifune. Yet like Yojimbo, Ogami’s sword skills should never be brought into question, his abilities far outreach any fool enough to challenge him. Here the influence of the popular Zatoichi series of films is also on show, of swordsman with incredible powers far beyond those ever filmed by Kurosawa.

The narrative follows the pacing of those samurai movies, with long tense build-ups to relatively short fight scenes. Kojima uses such a variety of different techniques in his drawing. Soft flowing, painted shades capture the beauty of Japan. Then with harsh, black lines violence literally explodes of the page.

It was Kazuo Koike himself who adapted the stories into screenplays for the series of Lone Wolf films, one of the reasons they so closely capture the original comics. The characters were so popular there was even a television series. It wasn’t his only success, he also created the Crying Freeman character with artist Ryoichi Ikegami.

Though the comics have in part been reprinted before in the west, this printing by Dark Horse Comics was the first time they’d been printed in their original format – allowing us all to enjoy these wonderful stories in their full glory. And don’t be daunted by the scale of reprints, there are 36 volumes in the series but it’s pretty easy to pick up any of them and not feel lost or swamped by the plots and sub plots that run through the story.

Give it a try!

An insightful look into the life of Asia’s biggest superstar, as likable and endearing as the man himself…

Few could claim to be as much a part of Hong Kong cinema as Jackie Chan. From early appearances as a child actor in such films as King Hu’s classic Touch of Zen, appearing alongside Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, to his eventual phenomenal success and work as a producer – not just on action films, but also arthouse movies like Stanley Kwan’s acclaimed Rouge and Actress. Chan has been a part of every aspect…

Written as Rush Hour – the film that would finally establish Jackie as box office in the West – was about to hit the screens and playing on the title of his recent success Who Am I?, I Am Jackie Chan is as much an insight into growing up in Hong Kong as it is about their movies. It follows his life from his humble beginnings, growing up as the son of a chef for a the French Ambassador. Much of the book centres on growing up in a Chinese Opera school, recounting the hardships his master Yu Jim-yuen put him through. It all seems to have been worth it, though, considering the success not only of Chan but also his fellow schoolmates. They include Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Corey Yuen Kwai, Yuen Wah and Yuen Tak. (In fact it’s pretty hard to find a film in Hong Kong with out a Yuen in the credits.)

Gaining more work in film, Jackie eventually followed big brother Sammo for a career in Cinema. There were many false starts. Not least a time when he was contracted to Lo Wei, director of Bruce Lee’s first two movies The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, and groomed as ‘the next Bruce Lee’. To make matter worse, his first film was a sequel, New Fist of Fury. The comparison between Chan and Lee has stuck ever since, and it’s one Chan faces with much trepidation. Chan obviously respects Lee, who opened the doors for martial arts films, but could not be more different in style and has brought so much Hong Kong cinema that he simply doesn’t deserve to stand in the ‘Little Dragon’s’ shadow.

Lo Wei and Chan did not get on, and Chan found himself making movies he hated. They were also box office disasters! It wasn’t until he was loaned to Seasonal Films and teamed up with an older pupil of Jim-yuen’s school, director Yuen Woo Ping, that he found success. Not just success, phenomenal success! Between them, Yuen Woo Ping (who went on to act as action director on The Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and Jackie developed a formula based on incorporating comedy into a martial arts flick. It was based on visual humour straight out of Jackie’s love of silent movie stars like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.

It was a style he would develop in later films and it went a long way to extinguishing the long line of bleak, Fist of Fury inspired revenge flicks that propagated the seventies. After finally breaking free from Lo Wei’s contract, success followed success. The American market, however, proved a lot more difficult. Totally miscast as a Japanese driver in Cannonball Run and working with Enter The Dragon director Robert Clouse (again that unfortunate comparison) on Battle Creak Brawl, where Chan was not allowed to use his vast experience of stunt coordination in the fight scenes.

Project A (1983) really made his name performing the daredevil stunts for which he would become famous. (And which would nearly cost his his life on several occasions.) The sequel and Police Story series followed, but as popular as these films are, from here on they are not really dealt with in great detail.

Considering his audience when this book was published, it seems rather awkwardly placed. Jackie reminisces over too many heartbreaks to be of much interest to his core Action fans, reveals too little of the films he has worked on to be of interest to Hong Kong movie fans. Yet his endearing narrative, constantly veering off on tangents, should appeal to everyone. Whatever Jeff Yang’s input, anyone who’s heard him interviewed or one of his audio commentaries (such as that on Gorgeous) will recognise this as quite genuinely Chan.

If anything, Chan comes across as very down to earth, normal even, despite his extraordinary life. As well as being Asia’s biggest superstars, if not one of the biggest in the world. This, as Chan himself points out, is very much a trait of Hong Kong actors and filmmakers They don’t even have time for pretension due to their immense output. He is extremely self deprecating about his mistakes, yet seemly his worst seems to be a spell of being headstrong and arrogant when he first became successful. There are also a few facts that are very hard to believe, particularly that his mother’s pregnancy lasted 12 months! Perhaps the most startling revelation comes from Jackie’s run in with the triads, they are a large part of the Hong Kong entertainment industry and have been since the turn of the century.

What comes through is Jackie’s loyalty to his Hong Kong audience, however successful he becomes in the west. He’ll never abandon them just to make movies in Hollywood, though this also makes him too conscious of the roles they expect him to play. Having had poor box office takes whenever he’s tried to stretch his roles – such as his impressive dramatic performance alongside Sammo in Heart of Dragon, Jackie is unwilling to make the same mistakes again. We will probably never see Jackie cast as a bad guy, for instance, as Jet Li played in Lethal Weapon 4 and The One. And that’s a shame, as we’re all missing out on seeing just what he’s capable of as an actor…

I am not Jackie Chan. Thank you and goodnight.

A triumph of unpleasantness in the everyday, Suzuki’s unsettling sequel to Ring is creepier and superior in every way…

(Warning: contains spoilers!)

When the body of an old friend from medical school turns up on pathologist Ando’s slab ready for dissection his curiosity is naturally aroused. His marriage in tatters after the death of his son, there’s little to keep him from brink of depression beyond his work.

Soon Ando is uncovering the original mystery of the Ring virus, but behind it lurks a greater danger, that it is mutating so that Sadako’s evil can find another way into the world whatever it takes.

The actual film version of Spiral – originally released back to back with Ring – may have more poorly received than the adaptations of the original and the short story that became Dark Water, but the book itself is a far more impressive effort than the original.

Brilliantly building tension from the most routine and innocuous events and objects, like the later Asian horror movies, Suzuki manages to instil a leaky tap or an open window with a sense of dread and foreboding. More tightly paced than the original, the result is as unsettling as it is compulsive. You almost dare yourself to turn the page, even with an apprehension of what you might find.

Perhaps it was the extended gap between books, some four years, but Suzuki has a playful disregard for his audience. He throws everything they thought they knew about Sadako’s curse away, leaving them as clueless as our main protagonist. The deeper we are drawn into the mystery, the more we learn that, like Ando himself, there’s no turning back.

And if Suzuki’s original book had a nod to video pirating, Spiral is a more knowing acknowledgement of the books and his own success, as the virus looks to spread through the written word, as Asakawa’s original account of the Ring looks set to be published and even turned into a film! (Perhaps the making of the film must had been announced or at least discussed, even if it did take a couple for years for Hideo Nakata to bring it to the screen.) Such confident self-knowing, so playful of the slim boundaries between reality and fiction, is reminiscent of that scene in Scream where the lead character complains she’ll be played by Tori Spelling in the movie version, only for that to happen in the sequel.

There is a far greater purpose in Suzuki lengthy explanations of the virus, even if, once again, he reaches just a little too far in his conclusion, setting up the final book in the trilogy. He even manages to include the details from original book almost verbatim, yet without boring the reader. Meaning that the novel can be read as a stand alone as well as a sequel. A gripping page-turner, this is a must for fans of Asian horror.

The MUST-HAVE reference guide for the very serious Hong Kong movie fan…

One for the nerds and hardcore fans. John Charles presents a guide to 1,100 films produced by British Hong Kong studios. Imagine a Halliwell or Leonard Maltin movie guide devoted entirely to Hong Kong products.

Now that, despite what the cover may claim, is still not ‘complete’ by any means. (For example, Tower Of Death is not featured.) It is, however, bloody comprehensive and you’d be hard pushed to find a lot of missing films from that time period. Charles writes with a great amount of authority, not restricting him self to a set length for any review but instead giving the appropriate amount to each film, dependent on how much there is to be written. Most films are given a quarter or more of an A4 page, some more than half. The reviews are informative, with a lot of background information on their making, sources for some of their unoriginal music (quite a regular occurrence), cast and crew listing. In fact, everything a real fan needs to know.

Charles is definitely pretty opinionated about his movies (as will anyone be that buys this book). Though one might sometimes disagree, often he give a reliable, balanced review to the films. There’s even a rating out of ten for each film. Notably of the very few films to receive ten out of ten, three of them are my top three Hong Kong movies of all time (See my guide to the Top Ten Hong Kong Movies). Occasionally throwing a wobbly – Ringo Lam, for instance, doesn’t get higher than an 8. Well I said you might disagree, but at least he gives you something to disagree with.

So Charles is pretty canny, by limiting the timeframe on the films reviewed he gets away with the major failing of nearly every book on Hong Kong movies – little to no knowledge of what came before Bruce Lee. However, he also excludes himself from being able to talk about many of the exciting movies since, such as The Stormriders, Beast Cop, The Longest Nite and Time and Tide. (This book was published in 2000.)

Fair enough, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The only real flaw is it’s price tag. At 75 dollars it’s only ever going to appeal to real fans, but it’s worth it!

The book that spawned the cult movie, not to mention the US remake, and led the tsunami of Asian horror movies in the last few years. But is it really that scary?…

(Warning: this review contains spoilers for those who haven’t either seen the movie or read the book!)
The English language has such a dominance over published books it’s rare to be able to enjoy a work from outside of Britain and America. Yet elsewhere the world laps up English output translating all manner of novels. Usually, it takes a genuine amount of interest in the work of an author for it to get translated – in this case a Hollywood remake of a cult adaption finally brought Koji Suzuki to an English speaking audience, some 12(?) years after the first novel of his Ringu trilogy was such a massive success in his native Japan.

Ironically, stylistically and thematically Koji’s book shares much with one of the few writers to break that language barrier, countryman Haruki Murakami. Like Murakami, Koji’s lead character seems emotionally detached from both his life and family, but his need to feel more deeply is more than answered.

Investigating the sudden death of his niece, reporter Asakawa discovers that three other teenagers have died simultaneously. The one thing they all have in common is a night spent in a cabin, and an unmarked video. As his curiosity gets the better of him, Asakawa watches the video only to find out that anyone that does will die exactly a week later. Asakawa’s investigation becomes a race against time as he tries to find out the source of the curse, together with old friend Ryuji Takayama, before it kills him too, and uncover the mystery of Sadako – who will stop at nothing to get her revenge on the world, even from beyond the grave.

With a straightforward writing style reminiscent of Murakami, Suzuki brilliantly build the tension of the situation. His core idea, of a virus spread by technology that forces it’s victims to duplicate and share it with others if they want to live, is still a clever one and a somewhat witty comment on video pirating. It seems even more pertinent now with illegal copying of DVDs so rife – particularly in Asia. It’s also rather prophetic considering the amount of damage so-called computer viruses cause to our everyday lives, just because we rely on that technology so much.

Suzuki’s weakness comes when he tries to explain too much of the horror away. The narrative tension seems to get lost under a mountain of, often unconvincing, intellectual conjecture, just when you should be drawn deeper into the terrifying mystery of Sadako. Odd details only cloud the story, like doubts around the moral standing of Takayama’s character – that allow Asakawa to place his life in danger – only to find they are unfounded, or Sadako herself, who seems to be of transgender (that Asian obsession).

Hideo Nakata’s film adaption changed surprisingly little from its source, bar obvious change of sex over the lead character. Like most of his changes they amount to a simplification – as well as a preference for female leads. Nakata’s brushing over, at best, of many of the details only help to strengthen the horror. The audience, particularly a movie audience, don’t need everything explained to them. In fact, that only makes it scarier.

Nakata’s revisions only add to the enjoyment of the story. His introduction with Asakawa’s niece on the phone might have been in the book, but with Nakata it deliberately echoes the opening scene in Scream, a nod to the clichéd image of the girl alone at home. He turns the video into an urban myth, with School kids all aware of it – hinting that there could be far more copies of it out there than there are in the book. And lastly, there is that main divergence from the original book, the physical manifestation of Sadako…

No doubt seeing Hideo Nakata’s screen adaption has coloured my opinion – I know all the big frights that are coming, but Ring, well written and thoroughly engrossing as it is, just isn’t as scary – but it is worth reading.

Due to it’s success Suzuki himself seems to have broken the language barrier, with both it’s sequel Spiral and a book of short stories including Dark Water have been translated into English, and we can all be thankful for that.