Tokyo Weekender

6 stories

Tokyo Weekender

Tokyo WeekenderJapanThe Girl Who Leapt Through Time: 20 Years Later On July 15, 2006, director Mamoru Hosoda released his technically second but spiritually first anime film: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

10.19

Tokyo Weekender

Tokyo WeekenderJapanStreet Fighter (2026) Review: How Japan Is Reacting The new Street Fighter movie (dir. Kitao Sakurai) that opened on October 16 seemingly has one of the easiest jobs in the world.

10.16

Tokyo Weekender

Tokyo WeekenderJapanJapan’s Other Famous ‘Bebop’ Anime Trades Space Cowboys for Yankii Delinquents Netflix’s latest retro addition invites viewers into a special corner of Japan’s yankii genre, where the rough-and-tumble world of huge pompadours, modified uniforms and farcical high jinks is…

10.04

Tokyo WeekenderJapanA Film Lover’s Guide to Kamakura, Japan Most visits to Kamakura follow the city’s own little Golden Route: the Great Buddha at Kotokuin Temple, Hasedera Temple, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, maybe the bamboo grove of Hokokuji Temple.

10.03

Tokyo WeekenderJapanCooking With Kazuto: Inside The Boyfriend Star’s Restaurant For many, Kazuto Kasahara was the breakout heartthrob of Netflix Japan’s hit reality show The Boyfriend.

10.02

Tokyo WeekenderJapanPlastic Beauty Review: What It Gets Right About Japan’s Cosmetic Surgery Boom Netflix dropped its new, sensational Japanese original series Plastic Beauty (titled Downtime in Japan) earlier this month.

09.30

Our mark is 銀幕, ginmaku — the silver screen, and the same two characters in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

I came to Tokyo at twenty-three for a summer job at a Shibuya mini-theatre and the job never quite ended. Fifteen years of festivals later I still think the only review that counts is the one the room gives you: where the laugh lands, the moment three hundred people stop moving at once, whether anybody stays for the credits.

Cinepuuulse follows Asian cinema — Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand — across about a hundred and twenty sources. A good number of them are Spanish, French and Portuguese, because those countries programme this work seriously and write about it better than most of the English-language trade. Genre and art-house get the same seat here. I am not ranking them, and nothing is scored out of ten.

Each story is a headline, a short excerpt, one still and a link to the outlet that did the reporting. We never republish the piece, and the still belongs to its studio or its photographer. A Korean trade paper appears in Korean, a French review in French. We point at the work; we do not put words in anyone's mouth.

— Daren Wise, Tokyo