Watching Dragon, Hidden Growler

INDEX

Many Chinese and East Asian films are very successful due to their fantastic creativity and innovation.

Here are a selection that deserve your attention.

Rawle Austin presents...

Enter the NEO!

With East Asian popular culture storming the globe, isn't it about time you got more acquainted? NEO magazine started late 2004, in the U.K., and promotes manga, anime, Asian films, games, music and pop culture. Here's an interview I conducted with it's editor, Stu Taylor. Rawle Austin: How did you get into Asian pop culture? Stu Taylor: Almost 20 years ago when a Chinese school friend lent me his collection of Akira comic books. He also used to regularly bring back a kit robot magazine and various manga titles from his family trips to Hong Kong.

From there I started picking up translated manga titles from my local comic shop: titles like Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Lone Wolf & Cub, Ranma 1/2 and Mai the Psychic Girl.

RA: How was NEO magazine concieved and what were the highs and lows of getting to launch?

ST: I was approached during mid-2004 by one of the owners of Uncooked Media (NEO's publisher) as we'd worked together before and he knew of my interest in Asian pop culture, particularly manga.

Basically, Uncooked was approached by one of its distributors who suggested that it consider publishing a UK manga/anime magazine. There was a gap in the market as it had been years since there was a UK magazine that catered for this audience. The tough part was selling the product to retailers who either had absolutely no idea what manga or anime was, or had completely the wrong perception (the idea that anime was "Japanese cartoon porn" being the most commonly held belief). It took a lot of persuasion, money and time to convince retailers to take the magazine but once they did, NEO consistently performed on a month-by-month basis.

RA: What is the current state of the U.K. Asian pop culture market, in all it's guises?

ST: Well, it's looking pretty healthy. Manga is currently the fastest growing sector of books in the UK and it shows no signs of slowing down, for this year at least.

Whilst the anime market in the US has kind of levelled out, it is steadily rising in the UK, particularly due to mainstream coverage of the likes of Satoshi Kon's excellent Paranoia Agent series, and the imminent nationwide release of Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle motion pictures.

The likes of Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle opening in national cinemas up and down the country shows how much more receptive the general public are now to 'foreign' subtitle movies. It probably also helps that Hollywood is pilfering ideas from the cream of Asian cinema, with its own versions of A Tale of Two Sisters, Old Boy and Phone all on the drawing board. Astute film buffs tend to pick up the original Asian versions of these in a kind of "I was there first" attitude (and also discovering that the Hollywood remakes tend to fall flat when held up in comparison with their source material). RA: Which manga are you reading at the moment and what do you recommend to newcomers? ST: Ironically, writing about Asian pop culture every day leaves me very little time to read anything! However, the last manga book I read was Pet Shop of Horrors which is a series of stand-alone tales linked by a titular pet shop of weird and wonderful oddities.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the recent re-issue of Masamune Shirow's seminal Ghost in the Shell manga novel - some of the topics have become even more relevant in today's political climate than they were 20 odd years ago.

RA: What is your favourite anime and why?

ST: This varies, but the ones that I currently rate very highly are Akira, Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent and Princess Mononoke.

RA: NEO magazine is an entertaining read and performs a valuable service in educating the British public on the vibrant state of Asian pop culture. With eight months of publication under your belt, what do you want the world to know about NEO magazine?

ST: We've played with the content of NEO for our ninth issue on sale 21 July. Primarily because we have collated enough feedback from readers, industry types, contributors and ourselves to know where we should be heading next.

Basically, NEO is designed to be the essential guide to the latest developments in Asian pop culture here in the UK.

Our unbiased editorial approach and 100% independent status means that readers are guaranteed to get reviews that are completely honest.

Everyone who contributes to the magazine are fans, and genuinely enjoy what they do, which is something that I think shines through on every page.

NEO magazine comes out monthly and has a dedicated website at www.neomag.co.uk

Christmas in August - A Review>

<Kung Fu Hustle - A review

Check out Dianying.com for an extensive database of Chinese films.

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