Doug Cummings discusses and shares some quotes from Starting Point: 1979-1996, a collection of Hayao Miyazaki’s writings:

The book’s most notable feature is probably the diversity of sources (essays, lectures, interviews) and topics (history and aesthetics, reviews, memories, confessions) that offer a wide-ranging portrait of the animation master who studied economics and political science and worked his way through the ranks of Japan’s anime industry. Miyazaki is a thoughtful and eloquent writer, as passages like these reveal…

The Japan Times reviews Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars:

[Mamoru] Hosoda and his team, including animation director Hiroyuki Aoyama, action animation director Tatsuzo Nishida and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, have produced scenes of animated spectacle that, in their dazzling fluency of motion and untethered brilliance of invention, makes the usual SF/fantasy anime look childish and dull. At the same time, the film’s universe is thoroughly grounded in reality, with all its fantasy confined to the online sphere (though some of the wackier visual gags push the boundaries of the possible).

Besides being a family-friendly entertainment, “Summer Wars” is an incisive commentary on the ongoing transition from the grandmother’s analog world of handwritten cards and letters to her heirs realm of digital devices, in which the human touch is attenuated—or nonexistent. Will we succumb to our gadgets and machines? The film’s “wars” are no fiction—and our victory is not yet certain.

You can watch the trailer here.

I liked Hosoda’s previous film—The Girl Who Leapt Through Time—quite a bit. It wasn’t perfect, but it was one of the more interesting anime films I’d seen in a long time, and it showed a lot of promise. Suffice to say, I’m very eager to see Summer Wars, though I’ll probably have to wait for the DVD.

First, there was The Animatrix. Then Batman: Gotham Knight. Then Marvel announced it was teaming up with Madhouse to produce 4 new Marvel-related anime titles. And now, Microsoft is teaming up with 5 anime studios and director Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed, Appleseed EX Machina) to create Halo Legends, a series of anime shorts set in the Halo universe. More info at the L.A. Times’ “Company Town” blog.

PopMatters: “On Evas and Angels: Postmodern Fantasy Devotion to Neon Genesis Evangelion”:

With a franchise that has spawned movies, CDs, books, manga, merchandise, and other extensions of fandom, Evangelion is a cultural economic force that is unrivaled, considering the controversial content within it. Evangelion is a mecha (giant robots controlled by human pilots) anime that focuses on the characters of Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and a long list of other supporting characters. These characters have become the source of fandom as well, generating heavy interest as cultural icons who have a devoted following. Here we’ll explore how the rise of religion in Japan in parallel with the economic downturn of the 1990s, the increasingly apparent otaku culture, and the imagery and themes of the original source material have turned Neon Genesis Evangelion into a mythological entity that is worshipped by a culture that follows it with religious-like fervor.

While I was in Japan, I was honestly surprised at how popular Evangelion still seems to be. Not only were there posters for the new movie all over the place, but there were tons of toys to be found and I even saw a heavy Evangelion influence on a pachinko parlor or two. What’s more, I talked with several college students—all of whom were quite a bit younger than me—who were big fans. Here in the States, that’d be like running into a college freshman who was a huge fan of the original Transformers cartoon, if said cartoon were an ultra-violent pastiche of apocalypse, sexual coming of age, psychoanalysis, and Christian and Kabbalistic imagery.

While it’s difficult to not think of Evangelion as Gainax’s cash cow, what with their continued milking of the franchise, there’s also no denying that the series still remains a major cultural force in Japan, and not just within otaku circles.