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Showing posts from December, 2020

Sony buys anime streamer Crunchyroll for $1.2 billion; here's my take

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Three years ago, I asked Kun Gao, a co-founder and former CEO of anime site Crunchyroll, whether he thought the medium on which his company relied would ever go mainstream. We were sitting in what were then Crunchyroll’s headquarters on the seventh floor of the sprawling Westfield Mall building in San Francisco — a space once occupied by Microsoft. He smiled. “It’s still niche,” he said. “But it’s a pretty big niche.” Last week, Sony took a big bite into that niche by purchasing Crunchyroll from American telecoms giant AT&T’s WarnerMedia for a cool $1.2 billion. The deal puts the company Gao co-founded 14 years ago with five other computer engineering grads (and self-professed “nerds”) from the University of California, Berkeley, at the very center of Sony’s push to become a direct-to-consumer player, joining the fray with behemoths Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. Entertainment, and anime in particular, will be its cornerstone. To industry observers, Sony’s purchase, while likely over

Meet Japanese-Australian electro-pop music duo, Lastlings, in my last JT culture column for 2020

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The state of the world in 2020 is one that Lastlings, a half-Japanese, half-Australian musical sibling duo, seem oddly prepared for, right down to their name. “Lastlings” was the title of a short story that guitarist and producer Josh Dowdle, 27, wrote in high school about the survivors of an apocalyptic event. Nature has reclaimed the cities, nothing is open and the “lastlings” are the only remaining people on Earth. “We have a dystopian aesthetic,” Josh says on a video call from a studio in Australia. “I guess it’s a coincidence.” Josh and his sister, Amy, 21, have just released their debut album, “First Contact,” with an anime-inspired three-minute video trailer shot entirely in Tokyo. Their studied poses, artful silhouettes and symmetric good looks set against metamorphosing cityscapes recall scenes from a psychedelic Satoshi Kon anime. Were it not for the pandemic, you could’ve seen them perform live here this month. “We were supposed to play (in Tokyo) right about now,” says Josh

"Japan Through the Eyes of a MONKEY," Asia launch event w/Live Zoom reading and performance Thursday, December 17th, 4 pm (Jakarta) / 6 pm (Tokyo)

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Free registration is now open here . Featuring award-winning poet and novelist Hiromi Ito, author/illustrator Satoshi Kitamura, translator, editor and scholar Motoyuki Shibata, and Maesy Ang of the wonderful Post Bookshop, Jakarta .  Wish we were there (Indonesia) again, but hope to see you here on Zoom. 

"Monkey is Back!" Live Zoom reading and performance Friday, December 11th, 8 pm (New York) / Saturday, December 12th, 10 am (Tokyo)

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To celebrate this month's global release of the new issue of  MONKEY   in print & digital formats: Novelist Hiroko Oyamada is compared to Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami in this recent  New York Time s review of her latest novel, "The Hole."  We are excited to introduce Hiroko to you on Friday, Dec. 11th (US) / Saturday Dec. 12th (Japan) in MONKEY IS BACK! - a celebration of the global print release this month of MONKEY: New Writing from Japan literary magazine. • The Zoom event is free, and registration is here .  • You can now purchase your copy of the new English-language MONKEY here . Hiroko will read with her English-language translator, the scholar David Boyd. Artist Satoshi Kitamura will present kamishibai , a classic form of paper theater visual storytelling that was a precursor to manga. Founding editor Motoyuki Shibata will host, I will moderate. See you soon!