Animation sensation: why Japan's magical Spirited Away plays well anywhere. (The Critics Film).

TERRIFIED BY THE TOXIC PERKINESS of Pokemon and Sailor Moon, or by the splattery violence of other Japanese cartoons, mainstream America has largely shunned as childish or eccentric what Japanese audiences see as a sophisticated, adult art form--in every sense. Anime, as Japanese animation is otherwise known, has its eroguro (erotic-grotesque) side: One film features a woman who turns into a spider post-sex, her crotch transformed into a yawning, fanged maw.

Other anime films forgo the Freudian vagina dentata antics but explore similarly dark topics: nuclear holocaust, ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.