Japanimation is a series of talks and screenings of anime taking place at the Barbican centre as part of the City of London Festival. Last night’s seminar was about the anime series Samurai 7 – based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. The speaker looked in detail at the significance of Kurosawa’s work and the impact it had on Japan both when it was originally released and also today.

Samurai 7 draws on the plot and characters of Kurosawa’s classic but, being anime, it involves a lot more robots and guns.

It was awesome watching anime on the big screen while also feeling smugly intellectual for having attended a seminar at the Barbican. I already have my tickets booked for Paprika which is directed by Satoshi Kon – the man who brought us Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers – and therefore bound to be pretty bloody good.

Although I love robots as much as the next anime fan, the prevalence of them does tend to portray anime as not being a serious artform, which in my opinion is a shame.

It doesn’t help that anime VHS and DVD covers constantly mention Walt Disney in their marketing quotes. I don’t think that’s a relevant or helpful comparison at all.

Things like the Japanimation series are a brilliant way of showing that anime is not just for kids and hopefully will encourage distribution of anime in the UK in the future.