Released in 1977, Fantastic Animation Festival was a feature-length collection of 14 animated films. According to the narration of the film’s trailer, the 14 were were chosen from a pool of 1000 films that were nominated to appear. According to the list on Wikipedia, the shorts are a mixture of original stories, as well as known entities like Superman, as well as commercial trailers for the likes of 7up.

One of the shorts was created for Cat Stevens’ song Moonshadow, which appears on his album Teaser and the Firecat. It’s narrated by the late British comic Spike Milligan, hence his appearance as the only actor on this page.

The full feature is available to watch on YouTube, albeit in terrible VHS-level quality. It’s unlikely ever to be released on DVD or blu-ray because of the extensive rights issues that would be involved.

This one sheet is credited to a design company called Vision Graphics & Film/L.A. but I’m unsure who created the painted artwork. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

Princess Mononoke was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of the legendary Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli. Apparently around 144,000 cels were hand drawn for this film with Miyazaki personally overseeing each one and making hand-drawn amends to over 80,000 of them.

A fantasy drama set in the Muromachi period of Japan, the film follows the plight of a young warrior called Ashitaka who is stricken by a curse whilst defending his village from attack. After learning that he may be able to obtain a cure from the Great Forest Spirit (Deer God), Ashitaka travels west to try and locate it and ends up becoming involved in the battle between the animal inhabitants of the forest and the greedy humans of Irontown, who are attempting to strip the land of an important mineral called ironsand. The animals have a special ally in the form of San (AKA Princess Mononoke) a human raised by wolves, and Ashitaka must join forces with her to put an end to the conflict before all is lost.

The film was picked up for distribution in North America by Miramax Films and after the then chairman Harvey Weinstein proposed multiple edits to the film Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sent a Katana sword to Miramax with the simple message: ‘No cuts’.

This B2 poster depicts Ashitaka but other poster styles were printed for the theatrical release of the film in Japan.

Katsuhiro Ôtomo‘s landmark manga series Akira was adapted into a feature-length anime film in 1988 and directed by Ôtomo himself. Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

The film was recently released on blu-ray and the lossless Japanese soundtrack is astonishingly good. There’s still talk of a live-action remake which fills me, and countless other fans of the anime, with great dread. I really hope it doesn’t happen!

This is the rarely seen Japanese B1 poster that features a coloured adaptation of the moment in the original manga that Tokyo is destroyed by Akira’s out of control psychic powers. It’s not in perfect condition but I was really happy to find it at a poster shop on my first visit to Tokyo in April 2012. During the same trip I had the great fortune to be able to visit a retrospective exhibition of Ôtomo’s work called Genga (A Japanese animation term for keyframes, literally ‘original pictures’), which featured hundreds of pieces of his artwork and the original hand-drawn pages for the Akira manga. I was also able to wear Kaneda’s jacket and sit on the legendary red bike!

I also have two Japanese B2 posters for the film; style A and style B, as well as the American one sheet and ace illustrator Tyler Stout’s take on the film.

A great illustration on this Japanese B2 for Nausicaä, considered to be the first film from Studio Ghibli, the legendary animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki shortly after this film was released. Nausicaä was released in the US retitled as ‘Warriors of the Wind’ and was severely edited with many of the film’s themes and characters diluted.

Miyazaki has publicly stated how much he hates this version and the story goes that when Princess Mononoke was bought by Miramax Films for US distribution someone at Studio Ghibli sent a Katana sword with the simple message: ‘No cuts’. See the Wikipedia page for more details and a picture of the bizarre US poster.

This portrait of Princess Nausicaä with her fox-squirrel companion Teto was painted by Miyazaki himself and  it appears in a book of Nausicaa art titled The Nausicaa Watercolor Collection, which includes annotations by Miyazaki. In his annotation for the image, he attributes himself as the artist, while also complaining about her posture! “I know I’m the one who drew this, but I don’t really like this picture. The Nausicaa inside me would never pose like this.” Thanks to site reader Reynold for confirming this.

The poster is missing an Eirin mark, despite being the standard B2 size, and I suspect it may have been a commercial poster sold in cinemas at the time of the original release.

Nausicaä was the first Studio Ghibli back-catalogue title to be released on blu-ray in 2011.

Here’s the trailer for the film.

Superb artwork for what is considered to be the first film from Studio Ghibli, the legendary animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki shortly after this film was released. It was released in the US retitled as ‘Warriors of the Wind’ and was severely edited with many of the film’s themes and characters diluted.

Miyazaki has publicly stated how much he hates this version and the story goes that when Princess Mononoke was bought by Miramax Films for US distribution someone at Studio Ghibli sent a Katana sword with the simple message: ‘No cuts’. See the Wikipedia page for more details and a picture of the bizarre US poster.

The illustration is extremely detailed and I’d love to know who was responsible for it so please get in touch if you have any details.

Nausicaä was the first Studio Ghibli back-catalogue title to be released on blu-ray last year.

Here’s the trailer for the film.

This is the scarce international advance one sheet for the release of one of animation studio Pixar’s best films, 2001’s Monsters, Inc. It’s hard to believe it’s been 13 years since it hit cinemas as the fourth full-length feature from Pixar and a lot has changed since. It’s fair to say that their critical and box-office success rate has taken a hit with recent releases, including their last film, the prequel to this story, Monsters University.

Based on an original story created by director Pete Docter with help from other Pixar creatives, the film is set in the monster-filled city of Monstropolis, home of the titular corporation. The company generates ‘scream power’ for the city by having specially trained monsters enter the bedrooms of human children to scare screams out of them at night. Focusing on top-scarers James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman), and his one-eyed partner and best friend, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), the story follows events after a toddler called Boo is accidentally brought back through the door portal into Monstropolis and Mike and Sulley have to deal with this unprecedented situation without the company finding out.

The film was a huge critical and commercial success at the time of release and cemented Pixar’s reputation as the gold-standard for computer-animated film making. This international one sheet was printed to be used in English-speaking territories around the world and the image of Mike and Sulley is unique to this particular poster.

Katsuhiro Ôtomo‘s landmark manga series Akira was adapted into a feature-length anime film in 1988 and directed by Ôtomo himself. Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

The film was recently released on blu-ray and the lossless Japanese soundtrack is astonishingly good. There’s still talk of a live-action remake which fills me, and countless other fans of the anime, with great dread. I really hope it doesn’t happen!

This is an incredibly scarce B0 poster that was printed to promote a 2001 DVD release of the film in Japan. It features an illustration of Tetsuo from towards the end of the film by Otomo himself. It was designed by Toshiaki Uesugi, a graphic designer and musician who has regularly collaborated with Otomo, and who is also known as Mach55Go! for his musical work. Uesugi’s official site is here and is significantly out of date, but this page features a list of his work, which includes other Otomo collaborations as well as his work on anime like Cowboy Bebop and Macross.

This page has links to a lot of his work, including the items created for this DVD release, which featured the box packaging as well as a number of posters of different sizes. If you click through to the page for this poster (and select the small ‘next’ button) it takes you to a page with a picture of six copies of it on display in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Metro station and says that any copies that ended up in collectors’ hands were stolen from stations. It also says Otomo himself has 5 copies in his possession. A B1 portrait poster was apparently printed and featured just the left-hand side of the artwork. This collector site says that it’s thought that only 100 copies of the B0 were printed.

During a 2014 trip to Japan I was lucky enough to be able to visit an exhibition that was dedicated to Otomo’s poster design and I first saw this poster there (here’s a picture). I assumed I would never get the chance to add it to the collection but almost a year later the poster appeared on Yahoo auctions Japan and I was lucky to win the auction with the help of a Japanese friend. The white sticker on the bottom right corner was placed there in 2001 by the company that controls advertising on the Tokyo Metro and details when it should be taken down from display.

During a 2012 visit to Tokyo I went to a retrospective exhibition of Otomo’s work called Genga (a Japanese animation term for keyframes, literally ‘original pictures’), which featured hundreds of pieces of his artwork and the original hand-drawn pages for the Akira manga. I was also able to wear Kaneda’s jacket and sit on the legendary red bike!

I also have two Japanese B2 posters for the film; style A and style B, the Japanese B1 poster, as well as the American one sheet, and ace illustrator Tyler Stout’s take on the film.

This is an incredibly scarce B0 poster that was printed to promote the 2004 DVD release of Katsuhiro Otomo‘s 2004 anime, Steamboy. It features two illustrations of the main character James Ray Steam by the director himself. The film was Otomo’s first full-length anime to be released since the landmark Akira in 1988. Otomo had been busy in the intervening years, writing and illustrating several manga and contributing to other films, including the 1995 anthology Memories as well as the screenplay for the 2001 anime Metropolis. Steamboy was over 10 years in preparation and was apparently one the most expensive anime movies made at that point. The film has a steampunk theme and is set in an alternate 19th Century Britain.

The poster was designed by Toshiaki Uesugi, a graphic designer and musician who has regularly collaborated with Otomo, and who is also known as Mach55Go! for his musical work. Uesugi’s official site is here and is significantly out of date, but this page features a list of his work, which includes other Otomo collaborations as well as his work on anime like Cowboy Bebop and Macross.

During a 2014 trip to Japan I was lucky enough to be able to visit an exhibition that was dedicated to Otomo’s poster design and I first saw this poster there along with the ultra scarce Akira B0 DVD release poster that can be seen on Film on Paper here. I assumed I would never get the chance to add the Akira B0 to my collection but almost a year later the poster appeared on Yahoo auctions Japan and I was lucky to win the auction with the help of a Japanese friend. This Steamboy poster came from the same seller. The white sticker on the bottom right corner was placed there in 2004 by the company that controls advertising on the Tokyo Metro and details when it should be taken down from display. Take a look at the last picture which displays some hand-stamped marks found on the back side of the poster.

During a 2012 visit to Tokyo I went to a retrospective exhibition of Otomo’s work called Genga (A Japanese animation term for keyframes, literally ‘original pictures’), which featured hundreds of pieces of his artwork and the original hand-drawn pages for the Akira manga. I was also able to wear Kaneda’s jacket and sit on the legendary red bike!

It’s hard to believe that it’s celebrating its 20th anniversary this year but The Nightmare Before Christmas has lost none of its magic and is a film that I could happily re-watch year after year. The combination of Tim Burton‘s storytelling and character design, with Henry Selick‘s direction and Danny Elfman‘s brilliant songs (and voice) make for one of the best animated films ever made. The story has its origins from the time when Tim Burton was working at Disney as an animator and had just completed the short film Vincent in 1982. After writing a short poem with the same title, Burton played around the idea of adapting it as a television special and a book, but eventually Disney agreed to help him produce it as a short film. 

After meeting Selick, a fellow animator at the same studio, he came close to realising his original vision before development stalled, apparently after Disney felt the project was ‘too weird’. Several years passed which saw Burton strike box-office gold with Beetlejuice and Batman, before he discovered that Disney still owned the rights to the film. He and Selick committed to the idea of developing the project into a feature length animation and because of commitments to directing Batman Returns (1992) it was agreed that the latter would direct.

Utilising 20 sound stages and 120 animators, Selick set about bringing to life the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, and organiser of Halloweentown’s annual party. Fed up of the same routine year after year, Jack is walking in the forest and discovers a series of doors leading to other holiday-based worlds. Upon entering the Christmas door Jack is enchanted by everything he sees and vows to take on the role of Santa for the next Christmas day. Each member of Halloweentown is given a task to prepare for the big event, but their penchant for all things ghoulish isn’t compatible with the jollity of Christmas and Jack’s dream is in danger of unravelling completely.

The quality of the stop-motion animation and character design is first-rate and Elfman’s songs are unforgettably great. The Nightmare Before Christmas has a legion of fans and a 3D re-release occurred in 2006 which further increased its popularity, and a seemingly endless stream of merchandise has been released over the past two decades.

This is the illustration style British quad that was printed for the original release of the film and there is also another quad which I’ve dubbed the photo style (photo in the sense that it’s a posed still from the film) and that can be seen here. I’m unsure who’s responsible for this artwork so please get in touch if you have an idea.

It’s hard to believe that it’s celebrating its 20th anniversary this year but The Nightmare Before Christmas has lost none of its magic and is a film that I could happily re-watch year after year. The combination of Tim Burton‘s storytelling and character design, with Henry Selick‘s direction and Danny Elfman‘s brilliant songs (and voice) make for one of the best animated films ever made. The story has its origins from the time when Tim Burton was working at Disney as an animator and had just completed the short film Vincent in 1982. After writing a short poem with the same title, Burton played around the idea of adapting it as a television special and a book, but eventually Disney agreed to help him produce it as a short film. 

After meeting Selick, a fellow animator at the same studio, he came close to realising his original vision before development stalled, apparently after Disney felt the project was ‘too weird’. Several years passed which saw Burton strike box-office gold with Beetlejuice and Batman, before he discovered that Disney still owned the rights to the film. He and Selick committed to the idea of developing the project into a feature length animation and because of commitments to directing Batman Returns (1992) it was agreed that the latter would direct.

Utilising 20 sound stages and 120 animators, Selick set about bringing to life the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, and organiser of Halloweentown’s annual party. Fed up of the same routine year after year, Jack is walking in the forest and discovers a series of doors leading to other holiday-based worlds. Upon entering the Christmas door Jack is enchanted by everything he sees and vows to take on the role of Santa for the next Christmas day. Each member of Halloweentown is given a task to prepare for the big event, but their penchant for all things ghoulish isn’t compatible with the jollity of Christmas and Jack’s dream is in danger of unravelling completely.

The quality of the stop-motion animation and character design is first-rate and Elfman’s songs are unforgettably great. The Nightmare Before Christmas has a legion of fans and a 3D re-release occurred in 2006 which further increased its popularity, and a seemingly endless stream of merchandise has been released over the past two decades.

This is the photo style (photo in the sense that it’s a posed still from the film) British quad that was printed for the original release of the film and there is also another quad which features an illustration and that can be seen here. This design is effectively the landscape format version of the US one sheet.

A great piece of artwork by Chris Achilleos on this UK quad for the release of Heavy Metal, an animated film based on stories from the magazine of the same name, which was known for its blend of science fiction, fantasy and erotica. Developed over a period of three years, the film is an anthology of tales connected by a framing story, with each one being based on a segment from the magazine or created specifically for the film. Like its source material it contains plenty of graphic violence and sexual imagery, although the film is somewhat softer in comparison to the tales seen in print. Several different animation houses worked on the segments, which is how it was able to be completed in a relatively short period of time. The voice cast included John Candy, Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis.

Chris Achilleos is one of the foremost British sci-fi and fantasy artists and has been working for over 40 years, creating some of the most celebrated artwork in the genre. Born in Cyprus, Achilleos and his family emigrated to London in 1959 and he went on to study illustration at Hornsey Art College where he learned the skills of technical illustration and became proficient with the airbrush in his final year. The artist would go on to create illustrations and painted work for album covers, book covers, magazines and would publish a series of books showcasing his skills. In addition, Achilleos also worked on concept designs for films including Willow (1988), King Arthur (2004) and the Last Legion (2007). This portrait of the heroine Taarna and her faithful steed was influential on the creation of the segment in the film, although the level of detail in the animation doesn’t quite match up to his skills!

Sim Branaghan, author of the brilliant British Film Posters, interviewed the artist for his book and notes that Achilleos’ film work often ended in frustration and disappointment. His first contact with the film industry came with a call from Julian Senior, a marketing executive at Warners at the time, who invited Achilleos to produce some concepts for Greystoke (1984). These were swept aside for an urgent job to produce three big illustrations for posters for Supergirl (1984) that ended up being scrapped when the distribution of the film changed and the work went to the FEREF agency.

Achilleos was also asked to work on posters for Blade Runner that ended up being rejected by the clients who decided to go with the photo montage of the UK quad. There were other frustrating no-gos with designs for Clash of the Titans, Twilight Zone (1983) and an illustration for Batman (1989) that was caught up in a knotty legal wrangle. Some posters designs did make it through, including Riding High (1979), this artwork for Heavy Metal that was used on the UK quad as well as the US one sheet and Japanese B2, plus a quad for Jackie Chan vehicle The Protector (1986).

Great artwork by the legendary fantasy artist William Stout for Ralph Bakshi‘s post-apocalyptic fantasy sci-fi animation Wizards. The film was Bakshi’s first fantasy story and was something of a departure from the urban settings seen is his earlier works, including Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic. His intention was to create a family film that had the same kind of impact of his previous adult features. It’s essentially a good versus evil story set two million years after a nuclear war where fairies, elves and dwarves have returned to reclaim parts of the earth, whilst the rest of the human survivors are mutants roaming the wasteland.

The film sees two wizards called Avatar and Blackwolf, one kind and gentle and the other a grumpy mutant, born to a fairy (stay with me) who end up battling each other to prevent Blackwolf from using his band of mutants to destroy all goodness left on the earth. The film is described on the DVD audio commentary as being ‘an allegorical comment on the moral neutrality of technology and the potentially destructive powers of propaganda’. Blackwolf uses old projections of (genuine) Nazi propaganda marches to inspire his evil troops and frighten his enemies.

The film is notable for its rough animation style and its use of rotoscoping, a technique of painting over live-action footage, to create several of the major sequences, which was employed after Fox (the studio financing the film) refused an increase to the budget. Bakshi would later use the same technique for his 1978 version of the The Lord of the Rings.

This was William Stout’s first film poster and he went on to illustrate over 120 more, a few of which can be seen on his official website. Stout is known for being an incredibly versatile artist and he has worked in multiple fields throughout his long career, including motion picture design, comic art, book illustration, CD covers and paleontological illustration. He worked as conceptual artist and production designer on an impressive range of films, including both of the original Conan adventures, First Blood and The Return of the Living Dead; Stout designed the brilliant Tar-Man. Check out his impressive bio for more details and there are plenty of galleries on the same site.

The creature depicted is Necron 99, a robot assassin who is eventually controlled by Avatar and renamed as Peace.

The official trailer is on YouTube.

Katsuhiro Otomo‘s landmark anime, based on his own manga of the same name, was chosen by the artist Tyler Stout to be the first in a series of ‘Mondo Mystery Movies’; one-time-only screenings of a mystery film organised by the crew at the incomparable Mondo Tees. After the screening those in attendance are able to purchase a screen print by a mystery artist who is only revealed at the end of the film.

The 9th MMM has just happened and those lucky enough to secure a ticket were treated to a showing of George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead in a mall surrounded by 200 zombies with the man himself in attendance. Here’s a recap of the event on Collider.com.

Because the poster is exclusive to the showing and never sold on Mondo’s website it’s pretty much impossible for collectors who were unable to attend the screening to get hold of it, unless they’re willing to scour sites like eBay and accept the significant mark-ups in price that come with a second-hand purchase.

I had pretty much given up hope of ever getting hold of Akira, but after purchasing another print from Tyler’s website I opened the tube to find that he’d also included a regular version of Akira in there. Apparently he’d treated a few lucky folks to the copies of the print he’d been given by Mondo after the event, which gives you some idea of the kind of guy Tyler is.

I recently emailed him to ask him a few questions about the print so that I could add them to this site and the resulting interview can be found on this blog page, along with a few exclusive images from the creation of the poster.

There was also a variant of the poster (80 printed) with metallic inks and a different colour scheme that can be seen on Expresso Beans.

Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

The film was recently released on blu-ray and the lossless Japanese soundtrack is astonishingly good. There’s still talk of a live-action remake which fills me, and countless other fans of the anime, with great dread. I really hope it doesn’t happen!

Here’s the blu-ray trailer.

In August 2011 I was lucky enough to visit the island of Cuba for a ten day trip which was a fantastic experience. It really does feel like a country stuck in a time warp, circa 1965, particularly once you leave the capital and head into the countryside. It’s a stunningly beautiful island with very hospitable people but the relative poverty of the country is clear to see. It’s often said that the government is likely to relax the current freeze on foreign (particularly Western) investment once ‘Comandante’ Fidel Castro passes away, although with his brother Raul currently in charge very little has changed. This article on the BBC gives you an insight into the current situation.

The Cuban people’s love for film and cinema-going is legendary and our guidebook claimed that at the end of the 1950s there were over 300 cinemas in the capital Havana alone. Today, these great old buildings continue to thrive and whilst there I witnessed the queues of people lining up to see the latest releases. I took this picture of the Yara cinema in the Vedado area of Havana before the evening crowds descended.

Whilst in Havana I visited a bookshop that was selling original Cuban propaganda posters printed in the 1950s and 60s by OSPAAAL. They also had a handful of screen-printed film posters, all of which were reprints of the original Cuban cinema posters or re-imagined designs by local artists. They are officially screen printed by the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Artes Industrias Cinematografia) in Havana.

This is a screen print of the original poster for the 1985 animated film Vampires in Havana, which was directed by Cuban Juan Padrón. The story follows Joseph Amadeus von Dracula, known as Pepito, a trumpet player living in 1930s Havana who spends his time plotting to overthrow the incumbent dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. He’s completely unaware that he’s actually a vampire and that his uncle, a descendant of the original Count Dracula, has been using him as a test subject a secret formula which allows vampires to move about freely in sunlight. After learning about the potion, two sets of Vampires, including a group of Chicago mobster bloodsuckers, chase after Pepito with plans to use it for their own selfish means, but all is not as it seems with the potion.

The artwork is by the late designer and children’s book illustrator Eduardo Munoz Bachs who was born in Span in 1937 and moved to Cuba with his parents in 1941. Despite having no formal training in graphic design he designed his first poster for the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematografica), which was founded after the Cuban revolution to produce and promote Cuban films. He went on to design over 2000 film posters and is considered one of the most important Cuban graphic designers ever to have worked. He sadly passed away in 2001.

This Pinterest gallery features many of his posters. Whilst I was at the shop I also picked up a poster for A Clockwork Orange and one for The Godfather.

This is the scarce B1 size Japanese poster for the release of master animator Hayao Miyazaki‘s 1992 film Porco Rosso. Originally planned as a short feature to be played onboard Japanese Airlines flights, and based on Miyazaki’s manga The Age of the Flying Boat, the scope of the project changed and it was made into a full-length film. When compared to other Studio Ghibli films, Porco Rosso is set in more recognisable ‘real world’ locations, including islands off the Adriatic coast and the Italian city of Milan (even if it’s topographically inaccurate).

The film is set between the two World Wars and focuses on the story of the titular pig, actually named Marco, who pilots an armed flying boat which he uses to defend ships and other planes against bands of pirates who attack and steal valuables from unlucky travellers. A backstory explains that Marco was once a human pilot for the Italian airforce but it is intimated that he deserted from it at a certain point – one sequence sees him recalling an dogfight that saw all of his squadron killed – and for reasons that are never made clear he was turned into a pig (one character talks about a ‘curse’). When a cocky American pilot joins forces with the pirates he goes after Marco, shooting his plane down and then claims to have killed him. The pig survives the crash and transport his damaged aircraft to Milan where an engineer named Piccolo and his niece work to repair and improve it. When Marco and Piccolo’s niece return to the islands the stage is set for a dogfight between Curtis and the flying pig.

This B1 features an image of a photograph that is glimpsed in the film and explained by one character to be the last surviving photo of Marco as a human (the scribbled face at the top). There are several theories that fans of the film have posited about Marco’s appearance with some saying that it’s meant to be taken figuratively, that he sees himself as a pig and has taken that form in his mind, whereas others point to the fact that you glimpse him morphing into a human during one scene and another character apparently sees him change back to human at the end. Whatever the truth, he makes for an entertaining lead character and the film is another Studio Ghibli triumph.

This is the Japanese B1 for the release of the second film based on the anime TV series Space Runaway Ideon that was created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who had previously  worked on the legendary anime Mobile Suit Gundam. Never given an official Western release (to the best of my knowledge) the series plot is summarised on its IMDb page:

It is the year 2300 and on the distant colony world of Solo, a team of archaeologists discover three alien vessels that, when formed together, become a giant fighting robot – The Ideon. However, they come into contact with an alien race known as the Buff Clan, who claim the Ideon’s energy source of Ide as their right. A simple case of fear and mistrust triggers an intergalactic war, with the Ide and the fate of the universe at stake.

According to the series’ Wikipedia page ‘the series originally met with rather low ratings and was cancelled after only 39 of its scheduled 43 episodes aired. As a result, the producers were forced to insert a short segment at the end of the final episode that ended the series in the middle of the action. Demand for a release of the final unaired episodes followed the show’s cancellation, and two movies were produced to end the series.

The two movies, A Contact and Be Invoked, were produced by both Sanrio and Sunrise and released as a double bill by Shochiku in 1982. A Contact featured clips from the first 32 episodes of the TV series interspersed with newly animated footage. In addition a few new scenes, the movie also created new death scenes for character such as Damido, Mayaya and Daram. Be Invoked featured a modified version of the final episode of the TV series (removing the ending sequence), in addition to those episodes that never aired, finishing off the Ideon saga once and for all.’

The artwork features the signature of the Japanese artist Yuichi Higuchi who was involved in the film’s art department and also worked on other anime films as artist.

Katsuhiro Ôtomo‘s landmark manga series Akira was adapted into a feature-length anime film in 1988 and directed by Ôtomo himself. The film is set 30 years after an explosion levelled Tokyo and started World War III. Neo-Tokyo eventually rises from the ashes but it is a run-down, seedy city that is ravaged by marauding biker gangs and terrorists. Two members of a biker gang, Akira and his friend Kaneda, come into contact with an esper (a human with special powers, including telepathy) and soon Tetsuo is embroiled in a secret government project known as Akira. Kaneda must set out to stop his friend from triggering another cataclysmic disaster with the help of a trio of espers.

The film adapted most of the first half of the manga and dropped a lot of the content from the second half. It was hailed as a critical success on its release and remains many fans’ favourite anime film. Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

This is the poster for the release of the film in Thailand and features unique artwork painted by a local artist known as Noppadol.

I also have two Japanese B2 posters for the film; style A and style B, the Japanese B1 poster, as well as the American one sheet, and ace illustrator Tyler Stout’s take on the film.