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Anime isn't a genre. It's a medium, one that's still fighting for mainstream acceptance in the West. Its hold on American audiences is stronger than ever, with Studio Ghibli blockbusters and franchises like "My Hero Academia" earning critical acclaim and global adoration. However, too many people still associate animation with children's viewing. While there are plenty of great anime films that parents can show to their kids, this attitude still leads to confusion. Not only is some anime emphatically not child-safe, but if you dismiss it as kids' stuff, you're missing out on some great movies.

If you've never watched an anime film before, rest assured that it's not all sailor uniforms and jiggly bits, just like how action movies aren't all gravelly-voiced men and sexy ladies. There's something for everyone, although we also confess that you're going to see a lot of Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii here, and for good reasons.

Akihiko Shiota decides to introduce us his onscreen lovebirds Takuya and Satsuki during a casual, Japanese, high-school, Kendo practice. And this very moment of the two normal seventeen year olds dancing with their sticks opposed to one another with harmful intentions is Shiota’s trick to engage the viewer on witnessing one of the most heartbreaking stories of troubled romance ever filmed, and i say troubled since Takuya is clearly aware that his love and adoration for Satsuki can be only expressed by her hurting him, an idea the girl finds thoroughly appalling at the start of the film, but later, because of her disappointment about a sweet romance gone sour, she invests all her energy to humiliate Takuya the way he wishes. And she is intricated about that. And she loves that. And then she’s repulsed. By herself.

The scenery of Shiota’s movie is an S&m relationship,...

A series of dramas inspired by stories directed by Takushi Tsubokawa, such as “Hamelin,” from people he met in Muroran, Hokkaido, where he lives. It tells seven stories of people living in local cities. In addition to Ren Osugi such as “Kyoukaishi”, Nene Otsuka such as “13 Moon”, Kenji Mizuhashi such as “Kazoku Drawing”, Nahana, Shun Sugata, Kouta Kusano, Sayu Kubota, Komatsu Starring Masao, Nagatoshi Sakamoto, Kyoko Kagawa and others.

Synopsis:

Aquarium employee Iwanai (Hiroki Nakajima) sees a woman holding a bottle with a letter at the port (“Episode 1”). Shinta (Ryunosuke Kawai) finds an unreceived photo in his father’s (Ren Osugi) photo studio and searches for the owner (“Episode 2”). Mizuno (Kenji Mizuhashi), who leads the chorus, receives a request from her predecessor’s husband (“Episode 3”). Sugiyama (Kouta Kusano), an oversized garbage collector, is asked to dispose of the piano (“Episode 4”). Junior high school student Momoko (Sayu Kubota) visits the science...

We recently profiled 15 Filmmakers At The Forefront Of The TV Revolution, and a filmmaker headed to the small screen before many of the directors on that list is Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Back in 2012, he brought the five-part "Penance" to Japanese television, and later it screened internationally at the Venice Film Festival, Tiff and more. It's taken a couple of years, but now you'll be able to experience the drama on the big screen, and today we have an exclusive clip from the series.  Starring Kyoko Koizumi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Aoi, Eiko Koike, Sakura Ando, Chizuru Ikewaki, Mirai Moriyama, Kenji Mizuhashi, Ryo Kase, Tomoharu Hasegawa, Ayumi Ito, Hirofumi Arai and Tetsushi Tanaka, and based on the novel by Kanae Minato, the story centers around the kidnapping and killing of a young girl named Emili. Her grief-stricken mother Asako, frustrated at the crime going unsolved, lays the burden on the four girls who...

[Our thanks go out to Chris MaGee and Marc Saint-Cyr at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow for sharing their coverage of the 2010 Nippon Connection Film Festival.]

In the past 20-years in North America we've been treated to a steady stream of comic book adaptations starting off with Tim Burton's "Batman" and continuing with every super hero from Spiderman to Iron Man. Japan has also been steadily converting their comics, properly known as manga, to the big screen, but manga encompass a much broader range of subjects than most comic books in North America. I say most because there has been a thriving underground comics scene and it too has been used for movie fodder. The best examples of this would be Terry Zwigoff's adaptation of Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World" and Shari Springer Berman's and Robert Pulcini's take on Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor". In my recent interview  with manga artist and animator Akino Kondoh we talked about how in aamongst the popular manga adaptations like "Crows Zero" and "Tsurikichi Sanpei" there...