Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tom Mes, Martin Mes, and Jasper Sharp founded Midnight Eye and launched the website in the spring of 2001. Tom Mes provided the editorial vision while his brother Martin Mes handled the technical architecture as a designer and programmer. Jasper Sharp joined as a fellow editor to add deep knowledge of Japanese culture and cinema to the project.
The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film served as a comprehensive archive containing over 100 reviews of Japanese films that had previously received little attention in the West. The publication featured a foreword by Hideo Nakata, a director known for his work in the horror genre, which lent the book an air of prestige and insider knowledge. This book solidified the team's reputation by documenting a history being written in real time.
The creators of Midnight Eye made the decision to close the chapter on their fifteen-year journey on the 29th of June 2015. Tom Mes, Jasper Sharp, and Martin Mes announced that no further content would be added to the website, marking the end of an era for English-language Japanese cinema coverage. They stated that the site would remain as and where it is for the time being.
Midnight Eye contributors conducted interviews with legendary figures such as Takashi Miike, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Yuki Tanada. These conversations became a vital part of the site's legacy by offering insights that were rarely found in mainstream media. The interviews created a dialogue between the creators and the audience that highlighted the diverse perspectives of the project.
Even after the site went dark, the influence of Midnight Eye continued to ripple through the film industry and academic circles. Publications such as Bustle, the Criterion Collection, DVD Talk, Forbes, and Vice have referenced the website in their own articles, acknowledging its role in shaping the conversation around Japanese cinema. The site's archives remain a valuable resource for those seeking to understand the evolution of Japanese film in the early twenty-first century.