E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

A Little (Less Than) Kin but More Than Kind: Kangurashi No Arrietty (Arrietty and the Borrowers) reviewed by Sophie Mayer “I left my childhood in the garden green”: the haunting refrain of Cecile Corbel ’s ‘Arrietty’s Song’ is first heard in the opening minutes of Studio Ghibli’s film adaptation of Mary Norton ’s The Borrowers , when the voiceover narration aligns the viewer with Sho, a young boy with a heart defect who is being sent to spend the summer with his Aunty, in the house where she and his mother grew up. From the opening, the film has a sense of melancholy loss similar to The Virgin Suicides , an unusual mood for a children’s film. The mood is borne out by the story: Sho’s illness is left unresolved at the end, and Arrietty – the Borrower whom he meets in the house – is leaving with her family. Leaving the house, and leaving Sho. In many ways, the film does everything it can to induce the viewer to want another ending: one in which Sho’s friendship with Arri...

For all those who love Tokyo, and Japan, the news this morning that Tokyo drinking water is no longer safe for infants to drink due to radioactive levels is more than alarming - it is tragic.  One can only hope that somehow the reactors get back on the grid soon and some sort of control replaces the radiating chaos.

The International Nuclear And Radiological Event Scale , from 1-7, has been applied to the disaster in Japan.  It is now set at 5.  This means there will be, or have been, already, "several deaths" from nuclear exposure, and need for some limited countermeasures.  It is no longer a merely local event contained by the plant.  This is cause for grave concern.  We all hope not to see an event 6 or 7.

Rarely has a day been so fraught with peril and possibility as St. Patrick's Day, 2011.  On the one hand, we have the potential for three or four nuclear meltdowns, that might wreak great havoc on Japan, and on the other, we have the danger that rebel-held Libya might fall to the brutal government forces.  In both ongoing dramas, each of the highest possible orders of importance, brave people are facing mortal danger to try and save the day.  In each case, the outcome is fully uncertain - will the rods be cooled in time, will the West intervene and stop the Colonel?  By the weekend, we may be looking at two compounded tragedies, or two upward trajectories to sunny uplands of hope and repair, or a mix.  Fingers crossed.

The latest news from the BBC, that there is a nuclear meltdown  possibility in Japan, adds horror to the already humbling natural disaster of last week.  The people of Japan have endured much in their history - not least the atomic bombs the West dropped on them in 1945 - and they will come through this.  However, this is still a dreadful challenge for them - and an occasion of great national and international sorrow.  I wish Japan well at this terrible moment of crisis.

Sad news.  The bass player with Japan , one of my favourite New Romantic bands, Mick Karn , has died at the age of 52.  He was a very talented musician able to make strange new sounds.

Sad news - one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century has died - Neil Fujita .  Fujita made a stylish, indelible mark on the 60s and 70s with his album covers for classics like Brubeck 's Take Five , and the book covers for hugely-bestselling paperbacks The Godfather and In Cold Blood .  Fujita overcame racism and internment to become a vital part of post-war American culture, and is a remarkable figure, if not a household name.

If you have to see one Japanese Anime TV series this year (and you know you do) then let me recommend director / creator Satoshi Kon's curious audiovisual guilty pleasure, the cult Paranoia Agent (Vol. 1) - the rest of the series is out later this month. "Paranoia" may be a bit of a 90s theory thing for those of us in the West (see Panic, and the X-Files as sub-sets) but it has naturally made a come-back thanks to events like September 11th, whose latest anniversary is fast approaching. Kon's series, which is expertly animated, escalates, each episode building from the previous one, in terms of levels of violence, sexual perversion, and indeed menace, so that, in fact, the viewer participates in a spiralling level of unease, and paranoia. It starts innocently enough - a kid's cartoon designer (pictured above) begins to crack under corporate-life pressure before being apparently hit on the head in a random attack by L'IL SLUGGER - a weird boy with golden in-l...