The Guardian (London) May 4, 1995 SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. T15 LENGTH: 1320 words HEADLINE: MANGA FOR ALL SEASONS; A festival at the NFT shows there is more to Japan's cult anime movies than misogyny and apocalyptic animation BYLINE: Jonathan Romney BODY: AS THE debate rages about the National Film Theatre's programming policy - pop culture or the canon? Tarantino or Stroheim? - here's further fuel to the fire. Over the weekend at the NFT, audiences will be able to witness mortal combat between gargantuan robot creatures; college kids being rent limb from limb by tentacle -spurting demons; and a life support system for the elderly running amok and creating urban destruction on a scale Godzilla never dreamed of. It's part of a season, kicking off a nationwide tour, of Japanese anime - animated features often, but not always, derived from manga or comic books. Diehards of the high-culture camp will only have their fears confirmed by the fact that the NFT season is titled The Irresponsible Pictures - the original meaning of manga. In fact, the term is attributed to the artist Hokusai, who is said to have coined it in 1815 - and you can't get more high-culture than that. Manga imagery has long been a staple borrowing in Western pop culture, on record sleeves from Sigue Sigue Sputnik to Bjork. But the anime market opened up in Britain in 1990 with the first screenings of Akira, the apocalyptic epic by Katsuhiro Otomo, based on his long-running comic-cum-roman fleuve. Akira alerted western viewers and readers to a huge cultural phenomenon that's been established in Japan since the dawn of anime in the early sixties. Japanese TV currently features over 30 anime shows a week, and masses more appear in the OAV (Original Animated Video) format, directly for cassette sale. Now a growing, obsessive market in the West means that 10 to 15 new anime videos are being released in Britain every month, avidly snapped up by fans, or otaku - to use the term that's not as offensive here as it apparently is in Japan. "It used to mean a sad, depressive, lonely person, often with mental problems," says Chris Norden, manga specialist at London's Forbidden Planet bookshop. Non-partisan viewers may feel that nothing quite lives up to the first shock of seeing Akira, with its hyper-sophisticated thrill of shifting 2D planes, convoluted plotting and explosive body horror. In fact, the eight films in the NFT package - dating from 1982 to 1994, and all released by Manga Entertainment, Britain's foremost anime distributor - make up a patchy selection. The season's featured premiere, Space Adventure Cobra, is one of the least interesting, with a new-agey psychedelic feel, and a plot that owes a lot to Star Wars - complete with skeletal villain Necron, Darth Vader by any other name. Some of the selections confirm the perception that much anime is aimed at the teen nerd market. The Professional: Golgo 13 is a creaky piece of espionage that starts well with a stylised noir opening but soon descends into sub-Playboy leer material. Along with the more extreme misogyny, some of the films feature female characters drawn according to the anime convention most likely to baffle western viewers: adolescent heroines with Bond-girl bodies and the heads and hugely inflated moppet eyes of six-year-olds. Sometimes the appeal to the Lolita complex seems to go way overboard, as in Urotsukidoji: Legend Of The Overfiend. It starts off as a raunchy college-kids romp, then turns into a horrendous feast of entrail-spurting and nightmare sexuality. Legend Of The Overfiend achieved cult status here on account of its extremity - it shows in the season in its uncut 108-minute version - and for the most part is repellent watching. But what makes it so bizarre is its complete disregard for coherence, as if H P Lovecraft had been tampering with an episode of Porky's. Norden says it shouldn't be taken as typical. "There's a lot more stuff now which would appeal to women, if they'd give them a chance," she says. "In Japan, the market is split fairly evenly between men and women. Here anime is perceived as a male-oriented form, all action slash horror, but that couldn't be further from the truth." The most substantial films in the season - and the ones which feature the best animation - are from the mecha (robot) genre. In a classic futuristic sci-fi vein, they reveal a perplexing mix of technophilia and technophobia. Patlabor is particularly effective, a knock 'em down epic with an underlying anxiety about social change. The extravagantly comic Roujin-Z (originated by Akira creator Otomo) concerns a hi-tech bed designed to tend the elderly: in a revolt against the dehumanising of society, it expands into an apocalyptic titan. One film in the season, though, proves that anime can be complex and lyrical as well as exciting. Hiroyuki Yamaga's Wings Of Honneamise is essentially Top Gun restaged in a world in which space flight has not yet happened and an astronaut is the least prestigious job you can have. Its complex narrative teems with clever animation details and witty touches, like pastiche black-and-white newsreel, and an unusually eloquent range of facial expressions. Creaky dubbing notwithstanding, it beats recent Disney offerings hands down. But, as Chris Norden points out, what's released in Britain really is the tip of the iceberg. "A lot of this stuff is very subtle. I hope they don't get completely ignored in favour of tentacles." The Manga Film Festival is at London's National Film Theatre from tomorrow to May 11. Details 0171 928 3232.