Masamune Shirow (pen name for Masanori Ota) is one of the most popular and influential creators of manga (Japanese comics). He is best known as the creator of Ghost in the Shell, which most Westerners know more from the 2 Anime movies (directed by Mamoru Oshii) and TV show than from the original manga they were adapted from. His other well-known manga include Appleseed and Dominion.

Ghost in the Shell is essentially a cyberpunk (computer oriented science fiction) story and the anime adaptation of it was very influential on popular films like The Matrix. The story is that the Wachowski brothers were running into resistance from the studio when pitching the idea for the original Matrix movie. The Brothers W couldn’t seem to get across to the studio execs what kind of a movie they were trying to make until they sat them down for a showing of Ghost in the Shell and said “We want to make a live action version of something like this.”

In addition to manga stories, Shirow also creates highly-rendered “calendar art” specifically designed to appeal to the prurient interests of young men. It usually features scantily-clad or semi-naked women with exaggerated sexual characteristics, (who may or may not be robots or androids), wielding large high-tech weapons amid gleaming sci-fi trappings and futuristic settings.

Many of his images will be unappealing or downright offensive to some women. Ironically, strong women are the central characters in his comic stories. They are the heroes, the movers and shakers, the ones who make things happen. The men are either supporting characters or the villains.

Shirow’s drawings, even his highly rendered calendar images, have that “anime” cartoon-style look to the faces that many western viewers have trouble accepting: large doll-like eyes, tiny pointed noses and exaggeratedly small mouths and chins. His comics storytelling, however, can be fairly straightforward for Westerners when it has been translated and the images have been “flopped” so the panels read left to right instead of right-to left.

I don’t know of an official Masamune Shirow website, although there is an official Ghost in the Shell site. Here is a Masamune Shirow fan site with information and links, and another Masamune Shirow Hyperpage with info, articles, reviews and fan forums.

Here is a Shirow Gallery of his highly rendered calendar art as part of this French Web magazine Black Hole (see my notice at the end of the post).

Here is an About Shirow page on a British site, and another informational British site on The Art of Shirow.

To read Shirow’s actual manga, start with Ghost In The Shell Volume 1. The recent Ghost In The Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface is also good, but quite different from the original and his other work.

Note: The sites linked here contain sexually oriented material and nudity. Avoid them if you’re likely to be offended.

Hayao Miyazaki is arguably the greatest of all directors of “anime”, Japanese animation. He is noted for such classic animated films as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Laupta: The Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and, most recently, Howl’s Moving Castle (Amazon links).

If you’re not familiar with most or any of those, it’s the fault of a narrow-minded American movie distribution system and/or Disney, who has the rights to distribute and promote Miyazaki’s films in the US, but apparently doesn’t have a clue how to do so. (To their credit, they’ve done a pretty good job with the packaging of the US DVD versions).

Miyazaki’s films are among the all-time most popular in his native Japan, and deservedly so. Filled with beautiful drawing, splendorous settings, engaging characters, adventure, mystery, charm and wit, his movies refuse to settle for clichéd “evil” villains, simplistic black and white visions of morality and the tired formulas that cripple many Hollywood animated features.

Don’t expect the super-fluid animation of classic Disney or Warner Brothers animation, it’s not a priority in Anime, instead look for amazing settings, wonderful characters, intelligent writing and a much broader range of subject matter than you will find in western animation.

My favorite of Miyazaki’s films is My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro) (image above), a wonderful, magical animated story. For me it evokes certain aspects of childhood better than any other film (animated or otherwise): the “goes on forever” quality of a late summer afternoon, the deep fascination children can have with simple things, quiet moments that seem to reveal unspoken worlds, the terrible urgency of a lost sibling or sick parent and the blurred line between what is real and what is imagined and the (indistinguishable) wonder and delight inspired by both.

If you’re interested in Totoro, don’t buy the 20th Century Fox fullscreen edition, wait for the Disney widescreen 2-disk set due in March of 2006. There are also multi-disk sets of Miyszaki DVDs, a three pack (Spirited Away/Castle in the Sky/Kiki’s Delivery Service) and a six-pack (Castle in the Sky/Kiki’s Delivery Service/Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind/Porco Rosso/Princess Mononoke/Spirited Away).

Miyazaki established Studio Ghibli, a production house that produces most (but not all) of his films. Here is a link to the Studio Ghibli site (in Japanese) and the Google BETA translated version which is rough, but navigable.

Unfortunately the Studio Ghibli site doesn’t have a lot of easily accessible images. Here are some official movie sites: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and the (poorly done) Disney: Studio Ghibli site that is the official site for the others.

Here are some fan sites that have images:

A selection of Miyazaki film images from Planet Zot: Totoro , Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and Porco Rosso.

From WingSee’s Anime Haven: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky , Kiki’s Delivery Service.

And some Totoro images from totoro.org.

The Studio Ghibli site isn’t very practical for non-Japanese speakers. For us the best source of general information on Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is an unofficial, but excellent and extensive site called The Hayao Miyazaki Web at Nausicaa.net.