Anime and Feminism: Goodbye to Bhutto


Upon returning to Tokyo this past autumn I was invited to an advance press screening of Shinji Aramaki's dazzling Appleseed: Ex Machina--produced by John Woo, costumed selectively by Miuccia Prada, and scored by the re-grouped Yellow Magic Orchestra.

I emerged from the cave of Toei's screening room into a bright Ginza afternoon and scratched some notes about the film's trio of female leads: Athena, Yoshino and the sleek, feather-banged warrior babe, Deunan.

My notes were frenetically typed up that evening into the second column I submitted to my editors at the Yomiuri.

Now I'm in a relatively quiet and peaceful Manhattan at the close of the US holiday season and on the cusp of the new year. Events in Pakistan at the end of the old one have rendered this column terribly dated--in every sense of the phrase.

Ex Machina will be released in the US on DVD March 11.

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