Akira 35th Anniversary Box Set

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I found myself thinking about the story in between breaks and feeling both sentimental and inspired. In this powerful early noir from the great Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune bursts onto the screen as a volatile, tubercular criminal who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Takashi Shimura's jaded physician. The 6-volume, 2200+-page series is not just 'worth checking out' for fans of the anime, it's essential.

An old man with terrifying psychic abilities has become senile, and is now indulging his deadly and selfish whims, manipulating the residents like puppets and sending some to their deaths. Domu holds up remarkably well, and deserves to have a much wider audience; unbelievably, this is somehow out of print in North America. A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. The manga series is rather large, so one would obviously think that many subplots and miniature story arcs would need to be condensed or altogether scrapped, like many films need to do.

This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema—and a commanding new star by the name of Toshiro Mifune—to the Western world. Yet thanks to Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking semidocumentary approach, The Most Beautiful is a revealing look at Japanese women of the era and anticipates the aesthetics of Japanese cinema’s postwar social realism. Also, the collected version of the printed story was completed two years after the movie, allowing the reader and viewer to experience the (similar) stories to a different effect.

On a Technical Note: While I prefer the original right-to-left orientation of the 35th Anniversary box-set, Kodansha is still using the Dark Horse translation that appeared before Japanese formatting surprised the hell out of US publishers by catching on.Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.

I loved seeing these characters develop, and the underlying message of friendship and human connection being the only thing we truly have left when the chips are down.

A vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood, directed by Akira Kurosawa, sets Shakespeare’s definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. Included in the set are the six volumes of the series, along with the odds-and-ends artbook Akira Club. The main takeaway is that the manga is so dense with information, character development, and richer story threads that it would have been impossible to cram all of it into a single feature film experience.