Courtesy of Corey Helford Gallery

The Cat Carrier by Shag/Josh Agle

​"When [Mad Men] first started, all of my friends, everyone who knows me, said, 'You've got to watch it. You'll love the costumes and the sets,'" says Josh Agle, the artist best known as Shag.

Agle, though, wasn't necessarily interested in checking out the mid-20th-century costumes and interiors that mark AMC's hit series. And when he finally walked in on his wife watching Mad Men, it was the stories and characters that sucked him into the show.

"I hope that's the same thing with my paintings," he says by phone. "They might be set in the '50s or '60s or '70s, but the real content is in the characters and stories they're telling as opposed to the window dressing, the way they are dressed and the furniture that they're sitting on."

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Frances Delgado, anime figure collector and host of Toybox on AX Live

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The world has been taken over by monsters. You and your family are forced to live in the bowels of the Earth. Against all odds, you decide to fight the evil beings above you and save the human race. And you do it all in a tiny bikini and knee high tights.

This is the plight of Yoko, a 14-year-old red-head with a rifle, and one of Frances Delgado's favorite anime characters. "She's so resilient," Frances enthuses. "Her life is so tragic, but she manages to hold on to the small happiness she has."

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Akira production art courtesy of Joe Peacock/Art of Akira

​Though talk of a Hollywood-made version of Akira has been around for years, it's been all the buzz amongst fans of the classic manga and anime since the project was greenlit last month. Unfortunately, that buzz hasn't been good. Many have said that this film has become an example of "whitewashing," with Caucasian actors now linked to play Japanese characters and a purported change in setting from Neo-Tokyo to Neo-New York.

Akira's influence has reached far and wide. Katsuhiro Otomo, who created the original manga, also directed the anime. Despite the differences between the two works, when it comes to Akira, we're largely seeing one man's vision of a deeply unsettling future. That's about to change.

I've been grumbling about this newfangled version of Akira alongside my fellow anime aficionados for months. (Let it be known on the record that I would much rather see a live action Cowboy Bebop starring Keanu Reeves.) But, for purposes of this story, I talked to someone far more knowledgeable of the world created by Otomo.

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Dianne Garcia

Stephanie Sheh, who organizes We Heart Japan events, at Meltdown Comics in March

​Days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, Los Angeles-based voice actor Stephanie Sheh, known for her roles on popular series like Bleach, FLCL, Naruto and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, flew into action and helped form We Heart Japan. The organization hosts creative fundraising events featuring a number of people involved in the U.S. anime industry, with proceeds going to Japan NGO Earthquake Relief and Recovery Fund.

Last March, we attended We Heart Japan's inaugural event, an art and memorabilia auction/autograph signing held at Meltdown Comics that raised $7,500 for disaster relief. As Japan continues to recover from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, We Heart Japan has continued organizing fundraiser. On October 1, they will be holding what might be their biggest event yet with We Heart Performing for Japan at Theater of Arts Arena Stage in Hollywood.

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Dianne Garcia

AM2, 2011

​AM2, the fan convention dedicated to "animation, music and manga," has announced that it will return for a second event at Anaheim Convention Center on June 15-17, 2012.

The convention follows an unusual model in that general admission is free. Fans, however, have the option of paying for a Passport that allows for preferred seating at convention events and discounts at local establishments. The Passports follow a pricing schedule similar to typical convention badges. You can opt to buy a one, two or three day Passport and, the earlier you purchase the Passport, the more you save on the cost. According to AM2's press release, Passports will be available in the $25-40 price range until December 31.

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Shannon Cottrell

​See more photos in "Southern California Crossplay."

Crossplay is exactly what you think it might be, cosplay that involves crossdressing. It's not the same as gender-bending an existing character, as Gender Bent Justice League did this year at San Diego Comic-Con. With crossplay, a female fan will present herself as a male character and vice versa.

Ultimately, crossplay is no different from cosplay, it's a fan-oriented art form that can take many different paths. Some people don't make a major effort to conceal their actual gender. Others take painstaking measures to resemble the opposite-gender character as closely as possible. The choice is up to the fan.

While you may stumble upon crossplayers at any event that encourages costume, the phenomenon is most common within the anime fandom. Sure, we may see a few girls portraying male characters from The Venture Bros. at San Diego Comic-Con, but nothing draws the sheer amount and diversity of crossplayers like anime conventions. In Southern California, we tend to see the most crossplayers at Anime Expo and Anime Los Angeles.

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Paprika

​On the first Tuesday of every month, Jerry Beck-- animation historian, producer and co-editor of the fantastic blog Cartoon Brew-- takes over Cinefamily for Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays. Each installment typically centers around a theme. For August, that theme was dreams.

The main event of the evening was the screening of a 35 mm print of Paprika (subtitled), the pre-Inception anime about infiltrating dreams based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui and directed by the late Satoshi Kon. We're big fans of Kon's work and, admittedly, Paprika was the reason why we made sure we got out of the office early enough to head over to the Fairfax Avenue theater. However, it was the shorts that screened before the feature that helped make the night feel complete. The "pre-show" included the silent film "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend" (live action), a Little Nemo test film that would surely appeal to Hayao Miyazaki fans, Popeye "Wotta Nitemare," Little Lulu "Musical Lulu," Chuck Jones' "From A to Z-Z-Z-Z" and Bob Clampett's "The Big Snooze," featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

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Shannon Cottrell

Ethan Spaulding, Michael Jelenic, Dan Norton of ThunderCats

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See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's slideshow, "ThunderCats Studio Tour."

ThunderCats art director Dan Norton has a sign in his office that reads, "This is the day you dreamed of when you were 12 years old."

"I was a ridiculous ThunderCats fan," he says.

"I mean, you would run home from school, do whatever you had to do to get home, especially to catch the intro," he continues. "That set the pace for the whole episode."

Norton liked the "seriousness" of the show. ThunderCats, he says, was not "a throw it in your face superhero show." He recalls being twelve-years-old and wondering if he could "draw something that cool."

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Mike Bruce/Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Installation view, © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

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Japanese art superstar Takashi Murakami is at it again, with a new show at the Gagosian Gallery in London. While his last show for Gagosian centered around death and memento mori, Murakami has gone in a completely different direction this time, and focused on an ever-present theme: the sexual complexes of the Japanese male.

Married to that is an exploration of Murakami's own artistic complexes, including his reliance on traditional Japanese artistic culture (one piece pays explicit homage to turn-of-the-century painter Kuroda Seiki).

As you can expect from a Murakami show, the execution isn't exactly subtle. He's taken classical Japanese subjects, married them to anime culture and motifs from porn, and blown certain parts of them up until they can barely stand -- like the above statue of a girl who appears bent over in pain (though really excited!) because of her massive breasts.

Murakami's show may be blatantly racy, but it's also utterly absurd (giant gold penis with a smiley face, anyone?). Theoretically, he's saved by the ironic edge of super-sizing fantasy. But does it work in practice? You decide: here are our four provocative pieces from the show:

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