Jonathan Michael Clements (born 9 July 1971) is a British author and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Koxinga and Qin Shi Huang, as well as monthly opinion columns for Neo magazine. He is also the co-author of encyclopedias of anime and Japanese television dramas. [1]
Clements speaks both Chinese and Japanese, and many of his works relate to East Asia. He wrote his Master's degree at the University of Stirling on manga and anime exports, predicting the rise of several trends in the international industry including back-to-front printing, direct American investment in anime, and the proliferation of attempts to substitute non-Japanese products. Subsequently, he translated over 70 anime and manga works for British distributors, and worked as a voice director and actor. He wrote his PhD at the University of Wales on the industrial history of Japanese animation, later published by the British Film Institute as Anime: A History. [2]
He served two years at Titan Books in London as the editor of Manga Max magazine, an experience he would later fictionalise as the Judge Dredd adventure Trapped on Titan. In 2000, he received the Japan Festival Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Understanding of Japanese Culture, specifically for his work on Manga Max.
Shortly after leaving the editorship of Manga Max magazine, he became a presenter on the Sci-Fi Channel's Japan-themed magazine show Saiko Exciting. He has been a consultant and talking head on numerous TV shows, including New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors (Channel 4), Koxinga: Sailing into History (National Geographic), China's Jade Empire (Channel 4), and Chinese Chariot Revealed (PBS). In 2016, he became the presenter of three seasons of Route Awakening (National Geographic Asia), a series investigating the origins of several key Chinese cultural icons.
In 2019, he appeared on Christmas University Challenge as a member of the winning Leeds University team, alongside Henry Gee and Timothy Allen, captained by Richard Coles.
Although Clements has written a couple of novels, much of his fiction work is CD audio drama or radio under the auspices of Big Finish Productions, including the Strontium Dog series, starring Simon Pegg, and the Doctor Who spin-off Sympathy for the Devil , starring David Warner and David Tennant. [3]
Other work includes the script for the comic Tastes Like Chicken in the Judge Dredd Megazine, as well as assorted short stories both there and in Doctor Who anthologies. His most famous work, Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, was the name for a fictional TV series that Clements often used in his Newtype USA columns in order to avoid breaking various non-disclosure agreements regarding real titles that he had worked on as a writer, director or translator. The name was later used as the title to a collection of Clements's articles and speeches.
Clements's many non-fiction publications, on subjects ranging from the history of the Vikings to the life of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, serve as research for his fiction. His books have been translated into a dozen languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Korean. His major works include:
In 2011, he became a contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 3rd edition, [4] with special responsibility for Chinese and Japanese entries.
Hentai is a style of Japanese pornographic anime and manga. In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exist in a variety of media, including artwork and video games.
Judge Joseph Dredd is a fictional character created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra. He first appeared in the second issue of the British weekly anthology comic 2000 AD (1977). He is the magazine's longest-running character, and in 1990 he got his own title, the Judge Dredd Megazine. He also appears in a number of film and video game adaptations.
Patrick Eamon Mills is an English comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys' comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since. He has been called "the godfather of British comics".
Shada is a story from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by the series' script editor Douglas Adams, it was intended as the final serial of the 1979–80 season but was never originally completed, owing to strike action at the BBC during studio recording. Entering production as a six-part story in 1979, plans were later revised for the story to be broadcast as a four-part story in 1980. Ultimately however, the story was never completed in either format.
Great Teacher Onizuka, officially abbreviated as GTO, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa. It was originally serialized in Kodansha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from January 1997 to February 2002, with its chapters collected in 25 tankōbon volumes. The story focuses on 22-year-old ex-bōsōzoku member Eikichi Onizuka, who becomes a teacher at a private middle school, Holy Forest Academy, in Tokyo, Japan. It is a continuation of Fujisawa's earlier manga series Shonan Junai Gumi and Bad Company, both of which focus on the life of Onizuka before becoming a teacher.
Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as "the Father of Manga", "the Godfather of Manga" and "the God of Manga". Additionally, he is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during Tezuka's formative years. Though this phrase praises the quality of his early manga works for children and animations, it also blurs the significant influence of his later, more literary, gekiga works.
John Wagner is an American-born British comics writer. Alongside Pat Mills, he helped revitalise British comics in the 1970s, and continues to be active in the British comics industry, occasionally also working in American comics. He is the co-creator, with artist Carlos Ezquerra, of the character Judge Dredd.
Strontium Dog is a long-running British comics series starring Johnny Alpha, a mutant bounty hunter who lives in Earth's future. The series was created in 1978 by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra for Starlord, a short-lived weekly science fiction comic. When Starlord was cancelled, the series transferred to the British science fiction weekly 2000 AD. In 1980, Wagner was joined by co-writer Alan Grant, although scripts were normally credited to Grant alone. Grant wrote the series by himself from 1988 to 1990. Wagner revived the series after a ten-year hiatus in 2000. After Ezquerra's death in October 2018, the series was put in indefinite hiatus with no current plans for its continuation.
Andrew J. Cartmel is a British script editor, author and journalist. He was the script editor of Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era of the show between 1987 and 1989. He has also worked as a script editor on other television series, as a magazine editor, as a comics writer, as a film studies lecturer, and as a novelist.
Toby Longworth is a British actor. He has appeared on film, radio, and television and is best known for his role in Not Going Out as Paul. He is originally from Somerset, where he attended King Edward's School, Bath. However, he has worked most often as a voice actor, notably in several science-fiction projects, audiobooks, and video games.
David Bishop, also D. V. Bishop, is a New Zealand comic book editor and writer of comics, novels and screenplays. In 1990s he ran the UK comics titles Judge Dredd Megazine (1991–2002) and 2000 AD (1995–2000).
Hajime Kanzaka is a Japanese novelist and manga story writer from Asago, Hyōgo Prefecture. Kanzaka is best known for writing the Slayers novels that were adapted into the hit anime series, OVA and manga spin-offs.
Zheng Zhilong, Marquis of Tong'an, baptismal name Nicholas Iquan Gaspard, was a Fujianese (Hokkien) admiral, pirate leader, merchant, translator, military general, and politician of the late Ming dynasty who later defected to the Manchu Qing. He was the founder of the Zheng Dynasty, the father of Koxinga, the founder of the pro-Ming Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan, and as such an ancestor of the House of Koxinga.
FutureQuake was a British small press comic book founded by Arthur Wyatt, and later edited by Richmond Clements, David Evans and Owen Watts. Dedicated to showcasing work by new writers and artists, they published mostly self-contained comic stories, generally of 5 pages or less and usually of a sci-fi/fantasy/horror bent.
Jonathan Morris, is an author who writes various kinds of Doctor Who spin-off material. In 2023 he stood for election to Winchester City Council as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the St Barnabas Ward and won with 58% of vote.
Hotman is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sho Kitagawa. It was serialized in Shueisha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump from 1997 to 2000, with its chapters collected in 15 tankōbon volumes. It was adapted into a two-season television drama broadcast on TBS; the first one was broadcast from April to June 2003, and the second one from October to December 2004.
Reiko Yoshida is a Japanese screenwriter. She has written and supervised numerous screenplays for anime series, live-action dramas and films. Her major works include Kaleido Star, Aria, Maria-sama ga Miteru, D.Gray-man, K-On!, Bakuman, and Girls und Panzer. In more recent works, she has supervised the screenplays for Majestic Prince, Non Non Biyori, A Town Where You Live, Tamako Market, Yowamushi Pedal, and Castle Town Dandelion. In films, she wrote the screenplay for The Cat Returns, the original films that would make up Digimon: The Movie, Kyoto Animation’s hit anime film A Silent Voice, and the film adaptations of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, the second film of which was given a stamp of approval by the Dalai Lama. She wrote the story for the manga series Tokyo Mew Mew along with illustrator Mia Ikumi. Among her works, she was recognized for Best Screenplay/Original Work for Girls und Panzer at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival in 2014, and she won another Best Screenplay/Original Work award in 2017. In 2018, she wrote the screenplay for Violet Evergarden which aired on TV in Japan and is licensed by Netflix. Her latest project is the animated series The Heike Story, produced with animation studio Science Saru.
Helen McCarthy is the British author of such anime reference books as 500 Manga Heroes and Villains, Anime!, The Anime Movie Guide and Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. She is the co-author of The Erotic Anime Movie Guide and the exhaustive The Anime Encyclopedia with Jonathan Clements. She also designs needlework and textile art.
The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917 is a 2001 encyclopedia written by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy. It was published in 2001 by Stone Bridge Press in the United States, and a "revised and expanded" edition was released in 2006. In the United Kingdom, it was published by Titan Books. The third edition was released on 3 March 2015 with the subtitle of A Century of Japanese Animation. It gives an overview of most of the famous anime works since 1917.
Yuko Yamaguchi is a Japanese character designer and illustrator. She is well known as the third character designer of Hello Kitty.