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This month, Netflix and WIT Studio ("Attack on Titan") opened the WIT ANIMATOR ACADEMY, a scholarship-only training school at Tokyo's Sasayuri Video Training Institute. Despite massive commercial success, the anime industry is in crisis because there aren't enough skilled artists in Japan, and even fewer who are learning how to draw. I interviewed the main players behind the program for NIKKEI . Netflix-sponsored anime school goes back to basics New training academy for budding anime artists is surprisingly old school in its goals TOKYO -- For Japan's anime industry, the best of times could soon augur the worst. Never before have Japanese studios been so flush with contracts, licensing deals and cash. And never before has their talent pool been so shallow. The global market for anime hit a record $24 billion in 2019, according to the Association of Japanese Animations -- and that was before the 2020 pandemic sent audience numbers for streaming anime through the ro...

New book goes inside Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki Steve Alpert worked there for 15 years and knew major players Nikkei Asian Review TOKYO — Steve Alpert's book comes advertised as a business memoir, though you may find yourself grinning more often than annotating. For 15 years, starting in 1996, the American headed the international division at Studio Ghibli, Japan's most commercially and artistically successful anime company. As their first non-Japanese hire, he negotiated with clients from Asia, Europe and the U.S., supervised the English-language translations of "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away," voice-acted a character in Japanese for 2013's "The Wind Rises," and accepted awards on his employer's behalf at prestigious global film festivals. He also clinched the indie studio's nascent distribution deal with Disney, a coup to bring the films of Hayao Miyazaki into living rooms worldwide on VHS and DVD — and an Os...

Gkids brings anime's best to big screens in the U.S. The Japan Times At the start of a new decade, anime’s two top directors are being delivered to Americans by one company. And, no, it’s neither Disney nor Netflix. The relatively unheralded Gkids, which was spun off 11 years ago from the New York International Children’s Film Festival by founder and CEO Eric Beckman, has now become the chief North American distributor of films by Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai. On Dec. 16 and 18, as part of its ongoing Studio Ghibli Fest, an annual April-December screening series, Gkids will present Miyazaki’s late artistic partner Isao Takahata’s final film, “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” in theaters across North America. On Jan. 15, the company will release Shinkai’s “Weathering With You,” Japan’s highest grossing film of 2019, on 900 screens nationwide. Gkids also has a stake in anime’s less family-friendly material, like the edgier Studio Trigger’s first feature, “Promare,...

When Japan strikes the right chord The Japan Times American composer, arranger and violinist Chad Cannon’s first encounter with Japan came via a Nintendo video game called Ninja Gaiden, which he and his fellow childhood gamers in Salt Lake City, Utah, mispronounced as “Ninja Gayden.” Later, an older sister, also a musician, would return from a tour of Japan bearing a gift shop special: a Hokkaido-shaped clock that he hung on his bedroom wall. Now 33, Cannon is an accomplished artist immersed in Japanese culture. He has toured with the renowned violinist Midori Goto, and performed solo concerts in schools and evacuation centers throughout the devastated Tohoku region after the March 11, 2011 disasters. In 2016, he composed the original score for the award-winning Hiroshima documentary, “Paper Lanterns,” whose recording features shakuhachi flute player Kojiro Umezaki and vocalist/lyricist Mai Fujisawa. Fujisawa’s father, veteran composer and conductor Joe Hisaishi, bes...

Hayao Miyazaki: The never-ending story Last week, an NHK documentary chronicling Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement and un-retirement, “Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki” opened in select theaters across the United States. The same day on the other side of the world, his 1988 classic “My Neighbor Totoro” was released for the first time in theaters across China — 6,000 of them. Next month, Miyazaki will receive the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award. In 2019, also in LA, the largest-ever exhibition of his work will inaugurate the prestigious Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Meanwhile, in Japan, Tokyo’s Shinbashi Enbujo Theater will stage a kabuki version of “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” Miyazaki’s 1984 sci-fi epic. And 2020 (or soon after) will see the premiere of “How Do You Live?,” his 12th feature film, followed by the opening of a Studio Ghibli theme park near Nagoya. Miyazaki held a press conference to announce his retirement in Septembe...

Defining the Heisei Era: When anime and manga went global The Heisei Era commenced after two gods fell in rapid succession. The first, Emperor Hirohito, was no longer officially a god, having repudiated his quasi-divine status under the terms of Japan’s surrender in World War II, but he remained god-like in stature. His January death in 1989 at age 87 signaled the end of a Showa past both turbulent and glorious. It drew global attention from the world’s leaders and media, but had been widely anticipated in Japan. The other fell just one month later, in February, and his death shocked the nation. Osamu Tezuka, the beloved “god of manga,” died of stomach cancer at the age of 60. News of his declining health had been kept secret, as was then customary in Japan. Tezuka was a prolific workaholic and omnipresent television personality. He was also a licensed physician. Almost no one expected his sudden passing. The two deaths would augur a new life for Japan’s twin pop cultu...