ColossalCon conquers Sandusky, June 2-5

Don't dare call them mere cartoons. To its cultish fandom, this medium is known as "anime." Their creators, like Hayo Miyazaki, Yatoshi Kon and Osamu Tezuka, are considered geniuses on the level of Chuck Jones and Walt Disney. Movies like SPIRITED AWAY and AKIRA and series such as Cowboy Bepop and Ranma 1/2 are considered classic achievements. And their dedicated/demented fans go by the Japanese term "otaku."  

These people take their anime seriously. For example...When was the last time you saw crowds participating in Bugs Bunny lookalike contests? Or ruthlessly competing in Popeye trivia? Or paying big money for rare LILO & STITCH material, downloaded from the internet off bootleg Far East laserdiscs and edited and translated by obsessed fans in home computers?  

Wolf Children (screening at Zipcon in Akron, February 20)

 

Hailing from the legendary Japanese distributor Toho, WOLF CHILDREN was a hit theatrical release in Nippon in 2012 and, and no wonder (well, aside from riding the lupine coattails of TWILIGHT movies, of course). Visually stirring and hitting a lot of buttons for longtime Japanimation connoisseurs, animator Mamoru Hosoda's tender fantasy does not hail from Hayao Miyazaki's renown Studio Ghibli - but there is a strong affinity, particularly in its reverence for the natural world.  

Heroine Hana is an orphaned, big-city Japanese college student with a keep-smiling attitude to life (pretty girl, big-city college student, keep-smiling attitude to life? Like I said, it's a fantasy). She falls in love with a handsome loner on the fringes of the campus. The nameless man reveals his astounding secret, that he is actually a Japanese wolf, the last of his kind, hiding in human form. Werewolf movies have it all wrong, he affirms.  

Dope Island: The Fiend's superhero fix for those of you who couldn't go to Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The closest thing I had to New Year's resolution this year was that I'd start posting my dreams/nightmares online. If I haven't followed through, it's mainly because most of my dreams, as I can best foggily recall, were not of a very interesting nature. 

But I had a great one the other night. In it, I finally, FINALLY got hired at a local newspaper. I think it was the Morning Journal of Lorain, for whom I freelanced for 18 years before they downsized me (and just about everyone else) out a few years ago. But here, I was back on the team. When I showed up at the place you would never dream it was a financially struggling Ohio daily. The news offices were like a chain of airplane hangars or big-box stores, just vast spaces. Moreover, there was some kind of epic corporate musical-party celebration going on.