Ray Castleレイ・カースル

Film Premiere Japanese Pop Culture Documentaries
by Ray Castle, Manga Mad - Tokyo Otaku Tokyo,
and Techno Tribes, includes DJ Kotaro & VJ MM Delite



Ray Castle
Ray Castle's da da Tokyo Diary

Manga Mad - Tokyo Otaku (2007)
A documentary about Japan’s biggest pop culture and deepest underground, filmed in the comic capital of the world, Tokyo.
More people read comics in Japan than any other country. Comics account for 40% of all total books and magazines published in Japan.
Manga Mad gives insight into contemporary Japanese culture through the iconography of its biggest pop culture and explains why comics are not just for children, as depicted by the compulsive consumer obsessiveness of the otaku adult manga and anime scene.
The tradition of graphic narrative is traced in Japanese art history through to the post WW2 boom of comics, illustrated by the prolific influence of the ‘god of manga’, Walt Disney of Japan, Osamu Tezuka.
There is extensive coverage of electric town, Akihabara, the virtual reality, racy, manga-anime-mecca for otaku, as well as Comiket Market, the biggest comic and cosplay event in the world.
Candid interviews with artists, animators, publishers, historians, retailers and otaku fans punctuate vivid fantasy graphics and cartoon-clad, bustling, metropolis vistas, segued with an exotic, electro sound track.
Manga Mad opens the window behind the Japanese mask, to reveal what's really going on in the collective imagination, and explains why manga is so ubiquitous, mesmerising, virtually uncensored, and is now contagiously popular world wide.

Running time 59 minutes.
Producer/Director: Ray Castle


Tokyo Techno Tribes (2002)
Tokyo Techno Tribes is an informative documentary about contemporary urban life in the most technologically refined city in the world. Cyber youth cultures have developed through the imaginative and novel use of technology in the various media: music, art, pop, manga and fashion. Underlying social, cultural and economic trends are examined such as Japan's unique, isolated island culture, the post-economic boom recession and changing attitudes towards the role of the corporation in work and career attitudes.

Running time 52 minutes.
Producer/Director: Ray Castle

Time table:
20:00 Tokyo Techno Tribes
21:30 Manga Mad (2007)