Animation & Adbusters: two new stories

My latest contribution to Adbusters magazine is "Japan's Private Worlds," just released in the new November/December issue--the Virtual World/the Natural World. I set out to explore the nature of privacy in Japan amid questions of digital displacement and engagement, especially at a time when the nation's so-called 'digital natives,' those born and raised with intimate access to mobile and stationary digital media, are behaving very differently than their elders did and do.

My latest story for Animation magazine is "Heart Like a Wheel," also just out in their current October issue. Madhouse's forthcoming boffo anime release, "Redline," debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland this summer and will be released in Japanese cinemas in April 2010, with a US release soon after. I speak with whiz-kid animator Takeshi Koike ("World Record" from The Animatrix) and screenwriter Katsuhito Ishii ("A Taste of Tea") about their attempt to make an anime film that will appeal to America's auto-obsessed inaka tribes in the Western hinterlands. I also try to place the film in the context of meta-anime--works like Afro Samurai that deliberately target Western viewers, and anime films that are, at least in part, about conventional anime conceits and styles, like Satoshi Kon's Paprika.

Both stories are print-only at the moment--but both of the magazines look and feel great.


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