Howl's Moving قلعہ Voice Actress Haruko Kato Passes Away 

Howl\'s Moving Castle Voice Actress Haruko Kato Passes Away

Japanese film, television, stage, and anime actress

Kato is known for her roles in stage plays, as well as live-action television dramas such as the 1964

series. In anime, she is perhaps best known as the voice of Madam Suliman in

anime film. She also voiced the Madame in Miyazaki\'s

film in 1989. She also had a minor role as Giny in the 1969 anime film

Kato was born in Tokyo in 1922. She graduated from Shochiku Shōjo Kageki Gakkō (Shochiku Girl\'s Theater School), and in 1939, became a film actress at

film. She often co-starred in films alongside Kenichi Enomoto (Enoken). In 1941, she joined playwright Michi Kato and actor

\'s "Shin Engeki Kenkyūkai" troupe, and married Michi Kato in 1946. She started performing in main roles in Michi Kato\'s plays in 1949, until he passed away in 1953. She then married actor/producer Masaya Takahashi in 1958, joining his "Kumo" troupe, and acting in plays such as

. Kato and Takahashi divorced in 1973, and she worked as a freelance actress since that time. Her final role was in the Yōji Yamada film

(Good Day, Mother) in 2001, for which she earned the individual prize for the Kinokuniya Engeki Shō, as well as the Yomiuri Engeki Daishō. The following year, she was awarded the Order of the Precious Crown, Fourth Merit.

Source: The Mainichi Shimbun via My Game News Flash

The Best and Worst of the Season So Far: Week of Oct 29-Nov 4

Check out how your favorite shows are faring in our user rankings, now that we\'re a full month into the new season! ― Our team of reviewers are following 24 anime series of the Fall 2015 season and readers are rating each episode as the reviews go up. So let\'s have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season. Keep in mind that these rankings are based on how people rated i...

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers Interview with Director Takahashi

In anticipation of PONYCAN\'s upcoming home video release of Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, we sat down with director Takeo Takahashi to find out why Rokka is so damned good. ― In anticipation of PONYCAN\'s upcoming home video release of Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, we sat down with director Takeo Takahashi to find out why Rokka is so damned good. The visuals seem to have a South American infl...

It\'s one of the most predictable and unpopular endings in storytelling history: the hero wakes up and everything you just saw was a dream. Here are six times anime went to that well! ― Considered one of the cheapest writing tactics in the book, "it was all dream" is so notoriously denounced that it occurs more often as a punchline nowadays than as an actual plot device. Classic examples include

Skip Beat\'s 35th volume proves the series is still going strong while giving most of the inner monologues to Ren. If you\'ve been waiting for him to make a move, this is your book. ― It isn\'t often that we get a chance to have an entire volume from Ren\'s point of view, although given that Yoshiki Nakamura has kept Skip Beat going this long without it declining in quality, we ought to expect the unusua...

Right Stuf CEO Shawne Kleckner returns for a round of the tough questions: what\'s up with Gundam in the US, the state of the industry in 2015 and much more! ― ANNCast Episode 243: Saved You a Kleck Get the Flash Player to see this player. Right Stuf CEO Shawne Kleckner returns for a round of the tough questions: what\'s up with Gundam in the US, the state of the industry in 2015 and much more! You ca...

10 years ago there was a show called Bleach that was considered one of the biggest shonen franchises going. 10 years later, the show\'s been canceled and it\'s barely a memory among anime fans, but the manga\'s still running. What happened? ― Roughly ten years ago,Tite Kubo\'s Bleach was among the most popular manga franchises in the world. Online debates raged constantly, with Bleach, Naruto, and One Pi...

The Gundam series that started it all is out on bluray now, but there are two burning questions: how well does the show hold up and how well has it been preserved? ― When Mobile Suit Gundam Blu Ray edition was released in Japan, Bandai aired several commercials, all of which are included in this Blu Ray\'s bonus content. Each one features a middle-aged man going about his life while softly singing, “F...

Bridging the Gap between US Comics and Manga with Kodansha USA

Nobody denies there\'s a huge canyon between US comics fandom and manga fandom, but what are manga companies doing to close that divide? Deb Aoki talks to Kodansha USA\'s top brass for the answers. ― In Part 1, ANN spoke with the editorial team behind the Attack on Titan Anthology. Part 2 is our conversation with some of the top executives at Kodansha USA Publishing and Kodansha Publishing Japan, as th...

This week, we talk with the creators of the new RPG Indivisible! Plus Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, NieR: Automata, and yet another potential fashion disaster. ― I didn\'t expect another Nintendo controversy so soon. A few weeks after the company stirred debate by replacing bikinis with Zelda and Metroid outfits in Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, a similar fuss arose over Nintendo\'s upcoming Xenob...

The new film from the creative team behind Anohana is all about expressing yourself no matter how difficult it may be - but how well does the film express itself? Nick Creamer investigates. ― If you expect a movie called “Anthem of the Heart” to have its own heart somewhere in the vicinity of its sleeve, you won\'t be disappointed. This is a movie about secret hearts and burning youth, full of charact...