Saturday's L.A. Times carried a fascinating story by Bruce Wallace about Michael Arias, the first American to direct a major anime feature film. Arias, who was born in
Arias has been working for a decade on the Tekkon Kinkreet project, which is based on a three volume manga series from the mid-1990s created by Taiyo Matsumoto and published in the U.S. by Viz under the title Black & White. The idiosyncratic manga, which is rated 'Teen +,' focuses on the relationship between two street urchins living in an abandoned car in a pan-Asian metropolis struggling to maintain its character and humanity in the face of pressures for development. Matsumoto's manga has developed a strong following in
Tekkon Kinkreet received excellent critical notices and has done 'respectable' business in