Photo: Toei Animation

Topic

Japanese anime film reviews
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  • A people-pleasing boy helps a mysterious girl from another realm find her mother, but they are pursued by a god who threatens to devour them
  • My Oni Girl, while pleasing to look at, lacks the spark and inventiveness of a Studio Ghibli film – and plods towards a predictable and underwhelming climax
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The movie prequel to the popular Japanese anime series, The Birth of Kitaro: Mystery of GeGeGe is extremely violent and dark, but is a profound and rewarding watch for more mature viewers.

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Written and directed by prolific manga artist Mari Okada, Netflix’s Maboroshi is a Japanese fantasy anime in which an environmental disaster traps a small-town community in a bizarre time freeze.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s latest and possibly last anime is about a boy searching for his mother in wartime Japan. He moves to a farm, where he meets a goblin that looks like a heron and tells him his mother is still alive.

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Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa and starring Yuki Yamada, Japanese anime Blue Giant will delight viewers with its absorbing story and superb soundtrack from jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara.

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In competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, Suzume is an extraordinary achievement. Smart, sassy and weaving fantasy elements into a contemporary story, it is inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

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The latest addition to Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk manga series, The First Slam Dunk intersperses some of the best animated basketball scenes of all time with compelling character drama.

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Two melancholy teens find a magical tunnel that transports them to the past, and they begin to forge a romance, in Tomohisa Taguchi’s beautifully realised film.

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This uneventful but intensely soothing movie is a follow-up to a hit Japanese anime series, and follows a group of young women as they camp in Japan’s breathtaking countryside.

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A feature-length prequel to the hugely successful Jujutsu Kaisen anime series, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 follows a young bullied teenager trying to master a monstrous curse that has hold of him.

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Netflix’s Bubble is a Japanese animated feature by Attack on Titan’s Tetsuro Araki – but this cyberpunk retelling of The Little Mermaid has been related in better ways before.

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Netflix’s Japanese anime Child of Kamiari Month examines the lingering impact of grief as it follows a 12-year-old who discovers that her deceased mother’s godly duties have fallen to her.

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