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The Studio Orange Staff Talks With Anime Herald
Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on May 14. We apologize for the inconvenience.Author: Seth BurnEditor: Samantha FerreiraAnime Corner: The BEASTARS finale is around the corner. Looking back over the past five years, how has the series changed the studio?Studio Orange: We worked on Trigun Stampede after starting BEASTARS. We were able to take a lot of the technical advancements from Trigun Stampede and apply them to BEASTARS.Anime Herald: What was it like working with J...
The Terminator Zero Staff Talks With Anime Herald
Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on May 6. We apologize for the inconvenience.Author: Seth BurnEditor: Samantha FerreiraUnknown Outlet: So, what can fans and new viewers, people new to the franchise expect from Terminator Zero?Mattson Tomlin: For people who have not seen any Terminator movies ever, if those people are out there, they can expect something that is colorful, thoughtful, violent, visually arresting, well-directed, and hopefully a great story with great cha...
Moon, Prism Power On Stage at Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live
Author: Seth BurnEditor: Samantha FerreiraThere was a wide range of ages at Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live show at the Palladium Times Square. There were plenty of younger Sailor Moon fans, and there were certainly a number of fans who were there back in the early ‘90s, when Naoko Takeuchi’s masterpiece premiered on television.For me, it was pure nostalgia. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live covers the first arc of the series. To be clear, that’s an entire season of anime, on stage, in song, in 90 minutes. As such, h...
American Comic Strips: The First Manga
Author: Julian JefkoEditor: Cy CatwellThe comic strip was once a stronghold of American culture. Starting in the late 1800s, newspapers published dozens of oversized, colored comic strips in order to gain readership and many newspapers, including The New York Times, The New York Herald, and The Boston Post published dozens of pages of comics in their daily papers. This was due, in part, to competition between newspapers—in particular, between New York World and New York Journal—which added comics in order to gain an advantage over their com...
Divided We Stand: The Two Halves of Figure17
Author: Adam WescottEditor: Cy CatwellTsubasa is a quiet, sensitive ten year old who moved from Tokyo to Hokkaido so that her father could become a baker. Hikaru is a suit of biomechanical armor, or a Ribers, who transformed into Tsubasa’s double after an unexpected accident. They combine into the titular Figure 17, an adult-sized woman able to punch monsters so hard they explode. Only they can save Hokkaido from an invasive alien species called the Maguar.Just like Tsubasa and Hikaru, Figure 17 is a show with two distinct parts to its story....
Loving Animals with Dinosaur Sanctuary
Author: Robert IveniukEditor: Cy CatwellCONTENT WARNING: Since this article talks about animal care, themes of illness and death, smuggling and mistreatment, poaching and violence against animals – as well as animal violence against humans – will all be discussed and/or referenced. Reader discretion is advised.It’s not often that a manga catches my attention from the cover alone.I was cutting through Thunderstruck Books in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, window-shopping while on a lunch break. Normally, I only go into comic stores when I...
From Grassroots to Global - How Doujin Illustrators Influenced The Aesthetics of Japan's Underground Music Culture
Author: Kai RedfieldEditor: Masha ZhdanovaAmong the various niches that the anime subculture is comprised of, doujin music stands out as a unique oddity in discussions of its wider history. While it’s not a rare occurrence to see figures who started out in the doujin space eventually finding breakout success, like Type-Moon’s Kinoko Nasu and ZUN of Touhou Project fame, the elements behind the musical aspects of the 2000s and 2010s scene are comparatively often less discussed. A surprising chunk of history behind how doujin-adjacent music co...
Strawberry Hill Studio’s Austin David Coffee Talks With Anime Herald
Interview Date:3/20/2025Interview Format:ZoomAuthor:Angie MillsEditor:Samantha FerreiraAhead of the Legends of Anime & Gaming MusicSan Francisco concert starring Persona’s Lotus Juice and Cowboy Bebop’s Raj Ramaaya, we sat down with Strawberry Hill Studios’ Austin David Coffee to discuss what it’s like working with these anime and gaming music legends, the upcoming concert and the studio’s future plans.Anime Herald: Hello, my name is Angie Mills, and I’m representing the Anime Herald. I’m a long time anime and gaming fan, so I’m...
Sailor Moon Super Live London: A Magical (Girl) Show Held Back by an Inaccessible Venue
Author: AJ MackEditor: Trent CannonMagical Girl staple Sailor Moonhasn’t had the best luck here in the UK. Whilst many Millennial weebs around the world have memories of watching the DiC dubon TV, in the UK, only the first series of the dub aired on terrestrial television. The rest was only available on satellite, meaning a vast portion of the population was simply unaware of its existence. If they did know something about it, it was probably that it’s a cartoon whose boom anime babes make Barenaked Ladies think about the wrong thing. It wa...
Anime Herald Talks With Jordan Mechner
Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on March 22. We apologize for the inconvenience.Interview Date:10/19/2024Interview Location:Anime NYC 2024Interviewer:Seth BurnEditor:Samantha FerreiraAnime Herald: I’ve watched a lot of your videos about Karatekaand Prince of Persia, and there’s a mystery I’m trying to solve. Your mom’s karate teacher provided most of the moves for Karateka. Your father helped out with some of the others, and your sister certainly [did].Jordan ...
Reading in between the Panels, a Critical Approach to White Space
Author: Mark SullivanEditor: Cy CatwellWithin the realm of literary theory and criticism, we have various perspectives that help bridge the gap between an author’s work and their reader's interpretation. Most of these famous scholars focus on text under the belief that text alone is the sole proprietor of literature’s linguistic understanding and communication. Yet we, as readers, should not value text over images, considering their importance. Both play a crucial role in generating understanding on a simply direct and cosmically spirit...
The Spiral Curse: Junji Ito, Cosmic Horror and Anime
Author: Caden RogersEditor: Nicole MejiasImpressing no one and surprising even fewer, allow me to be the latest to say with complete and utter confidence that there’s no harder project to greenlight than a cosmic horror.In Hollywood, there’s exactly one reason why this is: money.Of the many sub-answers money provides its inquisitors, three in particular account for, when combined, a percentage higher than zero of suit wearing Californians’ reasons for rejecting a project pitch. The first is that cosmic horror is not cheap to produce, and ...
An Audit of Tax-Themed Anime
Author: Borealis CappsEditor: Samantha FerreiraIn 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, “In the world nothing can be said to be certain, except for death and taxes.”[1] Unfortunately, Franklin failed to consider the certainty that anime would be made about taxes as it would take over a century from when he wrote that letter before the medium would even exist.Post World War II, Japan had many debts it needed to repay and needed funds to help with reconstructing the country. [2] Its national commodity tax system w...
How Digimon Fans Got the Uncut Digimon Movies 24 Years Later
Author:Paul CecchiniEditor:Nicole MejiasEven decades after its release, Digimon: The Movieremains one of the boldest adaptations in the history of anime. Taking three completely different films from the long running monster battling franchise and splicing them together into one cohesive movie, complete with a bevy of corny jokes andsome of the most rocking American songs of the early aughts,continues to draw mixed reactions from fans today. Many adore it for the fun, cheesy ride it was. At the same time, many have longed for the films to someda...
Anime Herald Fiscal Report for the Year Ending 12/31/2024
IntroductionAs part of our efforts to maintain full transparency within our operation, it has been decided that every year, the chief officer of Anime Herald, LLC must compile an annual within eight weeks of the end of the fiscal year. This document will serve to outline our finances, as well as our performance over the course of the year.For purposes of reporting, our fiscal year runs from January 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024.Due to an issue with the license of our accounting software, we were delayed by two weeks from our original plann...
Addressing Ableism Through Anime
Author:Robert IveniukEditor:Cy CatwellCONTENT WARNING: The following article addresses ableist bullying and violence, both in fiction and in the real world, as well as real systemic oppression and erasure of disabled persons in Japan especially. Reader discretion is advised.Anime and manga can cover a wide variety of subjects, sometimes clumsily and sometimes with tact, but in ways that are always worth discussing. The adage “There’s an anime for just about anything” is a phrase bandied about in the fandom, usually as a slight or as a gag...
In the Name of the Disabled Princess: Disability Metaphor in “In The Name of the Mermaid Princess”
Author:AJ MackEditor:Nicole MejiasMetaphor can be tricky when it comes to discussion of representation. Often it can come across as heavy handed or dismissive, especially for disability metaphors. Writers (mostly able-bodied ones) will crash headfirst into ableist pitfalls and completely fail to pull themselves out again. For example, many read Deku in My Hero Academiabeing Quirkless as disabled based on the social model of disability: where a person is only disabled by the social attitudes and structures put in place around them. Yet, the effe...
Exploring the Wreckage of Golden Kids
Author: Borealis CappsEditor: Samantha FerreiraNot all innovative ideas burst forth into the world with the timing necessary to achieve mainstream success. In the gaming world, for example, DataSoft’s Le Stick for the Atari 2600was a commercial failure due to a lack of interest in its gimmick alongside the 1983 video game crash. Twenty-five years later, though, Nintendo’s Wii game console would release a similar controller that took the world by storm. The anime industry has a similar tale in Golden Kids, a soccer anime created by Youichi T...
Reading "The Boy and the Heron" as Children's Fantasy Literature
Author: Adam WescottEditor: Masha ZhdanovaWhen The Boy and the Heroncame to theaters in 2023, English language critics were quick to claim it as a film worthy of an older viewership. Dana Stevens at Slatecalled it “startlingly adult.” Brendan Hodges wrote for Inversethat the film “rejects the ‘Cozy Ghibli’ aesthetic his films have too often been reduced to…” This was not the Miyazaki of My Neighbor Totoroand Ponyo. Here was horror, dark magic and a storyline that demanded close reading (and knowledge of Miyazaki’s biography) to ...
Raj Ramayya Talks With Anime Herald
Interview Date: 3/30/2024Location: Anime Boston 2024Format: In-Person, One-On-OneAnime Herald: What inspired you to move from Saskatchewan to Japan? What attracted you to Japanese culture in the first place?Raj Ramayya: I was doing my undergrad in university, and I started studying karate. And I got a black belt in karate, and then I wanted to do music and study martial arts, and I went to Japan. My friends are musicians over there, and they said, “Come over.”And I was studying martial arts more, and I was teaching. And then I just got invo...
Viola Davis Invests In Anime Production
Author: Gabriel LeãoEditor: Lydia RiversIn February 2024, Academy Award-winning actress and producer Viola Davis, along with husband and business partner Julius Tennon, announced that through their banner, JuVee Productions, they’re partnering up with N LITE, a Black and Japanese-led media company, to produce anime and animated films focusing on Black and Afro-Indigenous narratives. This announcement shows that new and mainstream players are entering the business, and the art of anime is bound to see more diversity in the production teams an...
State of the Herald 2024: Looking Forward To Year 15
Good evening, and happy Monday.The end of the year is upon us once more, as 2024 comes to a close, and we set our sights toward 2025. As the year's final moments tick away, it's hard to avoid the melancholy that blankets the season like a fresh snowfall.Even so, it's hard to deny that the past year has been a positive one for us at Anime Herald, as we re-launched with our new design in February. The team at Hand Design Co.did an amazing job with the redesign, and we are all thrilled with the results. I can't wait to work with th...
The Everlasting Appeal of Music Anime: A Lovesong and Pitch
Author: Jack AndowEditor: Lydia RiversMusic anime always seems to be less popular in North America compared to Asia. Why is that? The genre has some of the most beloved anime of all time for us in K-ON!and Your Lie In April, yet for some reason outside of these titles, many in our fandom don’t give it the time of day. Quite frankly I think that’s a shame, as there’s such a wide range of wonderful titles that deserve to be seen. Just how under-watched is this genre compared to others? Using the services of MyAnimeList, we can take a look a...
Meet The Next Generation of Anime Fans
Author: Lauren OrsiniEditor: Cy CatwellI discovered anime when I was eleven years old, in 1998. That was during the first Toonami wave on Cartoon Network, when Sailor Moon shouted “Moon Prism Power!” for the first time on American TV. However, my first anime was The Slayers, which I acquired via my best friend’s older sister’s traded VHS tapes. Most of my classmates had never heard the word “anime” and honestly, my parents were confused and not a little bit concerned about my strange new interest. Yet anime’s unconventionality and...
COVER Corporation's Motoaki Tanigo Talks With Anime Herald
Interview With:Motoaki TanigoInterview Date:12/3/2024Interview Location:ZoomInterviewer:Samantha FerreiraEditor:Samantha FerreiraIn the world of Virtual YouTubers, colloquially known as “VTubers,” few organizations are as well-known as hololive. The agency, which operates as an office, part of the COVER Corporation, manages nearly one hundred talents worldwide between its flagship “hololive” imprint and the all-male holostars label. And while many know the names Gawr Guraor Inugami Korone, the greater VTuber community also holds a soft ...
Seasons of Ranma: Ranma Fanfiction of the 1990s
Author: Adam WescottEditor: Masha ZhdanovaRanma is a great martial artist and the heir to the Anything-Goes School. Even so, he suffers from a mysterious curse he picked up from China’s Jusenkyo’s hot springs. Splash him with cold water and he becomes a woman. Splash her again with hot water, and she becomes a man. This complicates his engagement to Akane Tendou, his tomboyish fiance who wants nothing to do with him. That’s to say nothing of his relationship to every other fighter within a hundred miles, who might propose to him or punch ...
Anime NYC 2024: The Shangri-La Staff Talks With Anime Herald
Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on December 4. We apologize for the inconvenience.Interview Date:8/24/2024Interview Location:Anime NYC 2024Interviewer:Seth BurnEditor:Samantha FerreiraAnime Herald: Are there any particular scenes from the manga that you felt needed to be modified to work well when animated?Ryosuke Fuji:The action movements are already in my mind when I am drawing them. It’s not that I am expecting them to look the same, but it is similar enough.Anim...
Solanin: A Comforting Coming of Age for The Lost 23-Year-Old
Author: Gabrielle PascalEditor: Nicole MejiasSpoiler Warning:Contains spoilers for Solanin.I had everything a person could need. A roof over my head. Food on the table. A supportive family and friends. I was in graduate school for writing and learning from professors who published books and had successful careers of their own. I’d hear my future was bright and that I had serious potential. I was surrounded by blessings and given so much love, yet it wasn’t filling. None of it felt earned. The guilt that came from this feeling was second onl...
Heart-shaped Box of Memories: A Princess Ai Retrospective
Author: Megan D.Editor: Alex HendersonOnce upon a time, a young woman was born from the dreams of a fading rock star, a rising manga artist, and a middle-aged businessman. She was an amnesiac princess with the voice of an angel, lost on the streets of Tokyo and caught in a conflict between two worlds. Her story was met with modest success, but her creators demanded ever more from her. Their efforts went in vain and in less than a decade she had disappeared, remembered only by those who witnessed her sparkling debut.This story is no fairy tale, ...
Anime NYC 2024: Toshio Furukawa Talks With Anime Herald
Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on November 25. We apologize for the inconvenience.Interview Date:8/24/2024Interview Location:Anime NYC 2024Interviewer:Seth BurnEditor:Samantha FerreiraUnknown Outlet: What made you decide to become a voice actor?Toshio Furukawa:I was a stage actor at the start of my career. My boss suggested I do voice acting. He was also a voice actor. That’s how it started.He was voicing the main character in the show “The F.B.I.” He took me t...
