The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (opens in Akron on January 2nd at the Nightlight Cinema)

[THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS opens in Akron on Friday January 2nd at the Nightlight Cinema.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I am rather surprised there aren't more documentary films about Japanese animation. Come to think of it, the only one I could really name, never seen but known only to me by reputation, is a shadowy DIY effort called THE OTAKU MOVIE, reputed to be more of a mockumentary/fan flick than anything else. While so much in the world of popular culture seems to be docu'ed to death (anyone seen Keith David’s Creature from the Black Lagoon documentary? How is it?), the breadth and richness of Japanese anime and their close relation, manga comics, are still fairly unexplored by documentarians. Is that possibly because the idea of these folks sitting at their workstations, churning out tons of their art, just isn't very compelling?