With any hopes of Disney making a 2D feature animation again looking increasingly unlikely, and even SpongeBob SquarePants venturing into CGI territory for a forthcoming movie sequel, it’s primarily left to the East nowadays for more traditional animation to thrive. Returning to Edinburgh and Glasgow this October for a fifth year, the Scotland Loves Anime festival showcases some of the best of contemporary and classic Japanese animation, mostly of the hand-drawn variety, on the big screen where so much of it belongs but is rarely seen by Western audiences (unless it’s another Miyazaki masterpiece picked up by a big distributor).

The festival features many UK or Scottish premieres, and the most high-profile of these is Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, the first theatrically released spin-off in years for one of anime’s most well-known and commercially successful properties worldwide. Any twenty-something who came of age during the anime on UK TV boom of the early 2000s (thanks, Cartoon Network) will want to get themselves to either GFT or Filmhouse to catch the gloriously daft super-powered fights, slapstick and general shoutiness through cinema speakers…

Full feature for The Skinny