Curated category
Anime
- Hayao MiyazakiHayao Miyazaki was born on the 5th of January 1941 in Akebono-cho, Hongō, Tokyo City, the second of four sons in a family that manufactured rudders for…
- My Neighbor TotoroMy Neighbor Totoro, a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, opens on a family driving to an old house in the…
- Studio GhibliStudio Ghibli was founded on the 15th of June, 1985, in Japan, and it took its name from a desert wind. The word "Ghibli" traces back to the Libyan Arabic…
- Spirited AwaySpirited Away opens on a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro Ogino riding in her parents' imported Audi, sulking about moving to a new neighborhood.
- GundamGundam is a Japanese media franchise that began airing on the 7th of April 1979, and what started as a single animated series about giant fighting robots has…
- Cowboy BebopCowboy Bebop arrived on Japanese television in 1998 with a tagline its own director would later call an exaggeration: "a new genre unto itself." That…
- MangaManga, the Japanese comics that now outsell American comics, were once the work of a four-page magazine that lasted only three issues.
- NarutoNaruto Uzumaki was born into a lie. On the night of his birth, his father, the Fourth Hokage Minato Namikaze, sealed a monstrous nine-tailed fox called…
- Neon Genesis EvangelionNeon Genesis Evangelion arrived on TV Tokyo in October 1995 and left viewers arguing, confused, and deeply moved in ways that animated series rarely managed.
- Princess MononokePrincess Mononoke arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 12th of July, 1997, and within days the newspapers had a name for what was happening: the "Mononoke…
- History of animeOn the 15th of May 1912, a Paris-made animated film called Les Exploits de Feu Follet screened publicly in Japan. It was the first confirmed showing of a…
- Dragon BallDragon Ball began with a boy living far from civilization, alone in the wilderness, until a teenage girl named Bulma found him.
- Dragon Ball ZDragon Ball Z premiered on Fuji Television on the 26th of April 1989, and from that first episode it was chasing something its predecessor never quite…
- Akira (1988 film)Akira exploded onto Japanese screens on the 16th of July 1988, the same date the film's own story marks as the day Tokyo was obliterated by a mysterious…
- Astro BoyAstro Boy is a small android with jet engines in his feet, a machine gun hidden in his hips, and the ability to feel. Osamu Tezuka created him in 1952 for a…
- Attack on TitanAttack on Titan begins in the year 845, when two enormous humanoids punch through the outermost of three great circular walls and leave a boy named Eren…
- Fullmetal AlchemistFullmetal Alchemist began in a single magazine page published on the 12th of July 2001 in Monthly Shōnen Gangan, the monthly anthology put out by Square Enix.
- Bleach (manga)Bleach began with a drawing of a kimono. Tite Kubo, a manga artist whose previous series had just been cancelled, sat down with the image of a death god…
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no YaibaDemon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba began its life in Weekly Shonen Jump on the 15th of February 2016 as a quiet manga about a charcoal-selling boy whose family…
- AnimeAnime began not with a studio or a streaming service, but with a short film nobody can agree on. A claim exists for Katsudō Shashin, made around 1907 by an…
- Osamu TezukaOsamu Tezuka spent his final hours in a Tokyo hospital bed, drawing. When a nurse tried to take his equipment away, his last words were: "I'm begging you…
- Toei AnimationToei Animation traces its origin to the 23rd of January 1948, when animators Kenzō Masaoka and Sanae Yamamoto founded a company called Japan Animated Films.