Bigger and better! Our first edition rocked the anime world with its in-depth entries on anime famous and obscure and its superb index/film finder. Now this fantastic book is 40 percent larger-with all-new entries on hundreds of anime released after 2001, updates on older entries, and over fifty thousand words on anime creators (like Tezuka and Otomo) and genres ("Early Anime," "Science Fiction and Robots," etc.). An absolute must-have for every anime shelf!
"If I only had space on my overcrowded shelf for one book on anime, this would be it. If I had no space on my shelf I'd select two books at random and drop them into the bin, just to make room-- it's that indispensable."-- Paul Jacques, Anime on DVD
"While you may not agree with their opinons on a given anime, they are informative and entertaining, especially when skewering a really bad anime." -- Frames Per Second
Amazon.com Review: In this important book, Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy present an enormous amount of information about 2,000 series and features, detailing their plots and relationships to other anime properties. In these areas, the book is definitive, and readers can only wish a comparable volume existed for American animation. The authors are less sure about non-Japanese influences (Cowboy Bebop owes more to noir detective films than to Route 66), and they focus more on storylines and the business of anime than on visuals. They don't discuss the influence of American Saturday morning TV on early anime designs (Speed Racer, the component series of Robotech) or the art nouveau styling in Revolutionary Girl Utena. The editorial evaluations are much harsher than McCarthy's The Anime Movie Guide: some of the most popular anime series in America--Tenchi, Evangelion, Ranma 1/2--receive sharp criticism. The result is a book that anime fans will either love or love to argue with. --Charles Solomon
Essential reading This is essential for any anime person, newb or otaku. An in depth history of all anime productions and their creators from the very beginning up through about Y2K. Sorry to say, the two authors don't seem to care about anything made after the mid 90's. like other authors in this field, they seem to only care about anime from the "VHS tape sharing" days. Too bad.
Not quite the reference book I hoped it would be This edition of The Anime Encyclopedia claims to have over 3,000 entries for shows, studios, creators, and anime history. It also claims the book is aimed at both "newcomers and battle-hardened otaku." By the time I finished reading this book, however, I wasn't truly convinced that is book is either for newcomers or "battle-hardened otaku."
I found a number of mistakes in this book for the properties that I'm familiar with. While I don't expect a book of this nature to be 100% accurate, I was astonished by just how many errors I found. Considering I know only a small number of properties that are included in the book, this is actually a rather high error ratio. And if this error ratio were to remain constant throughout the whole text, then that would mean there are a lot of errors in this book. The worst error I found was the entry for the Fruits Basket anime series. For one thing, the Chinese Zodiac curse is never mentioned at all in the writeup; in fact, the authors of the book claim the Sohmas are "sorcerers and shape shifters" in order to explain how the characters can change into animals. This made me wonder if the authors actually watched some of the show, and if they did, how much attention did they pay to it? Another big error is in the entry for Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, where the authors incorrectly state that the Crescendolls are rescued by a female pilot (when, in the anime, the pilot character is very obviously male).
Another issue I had with the book is that the authors insisted on using the titles that the properties were released under in the United States, rather than English translations of the Japanese titles. As a couple of examples, you can only find Space Battleship Yamato under Star Blazers, and you can only find Yu Yu Hakusho under Poltergeist Report. Also, when writing the descriptions for the properties, the authors tended to talk about the American version first, and then explain the differences between the English and the Japanese versions. As this is supposed to be a guide for Japanese animation, the authors definitely show more of a bias toward the English versions.
I also had problems with how inconsistently the authors handled some things. The biggest gripe I had with inconsistency comes with how they treated shows that were popular in the United States that were comprised of more than one show. In the book, you can find separate entries for Robotech, Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. However, for Voltron, there are not separate entries for Beast King GoLion or Dairugger XV.
This encyclopedia is also filled with quite a few snarky comments. The worst case of the snarkiness is the entry for Pure Love, where the entire description of the property is a snarky comment. While the snarky comments can be amusing at times, I felt they were overused by the authors. When reading the book, it felt as if the authors tried early on to be level-handed, but as they got further into the book, they started showing their biases more and more, which is illustrated by the fact that the amount of snarky comments goes up as the book progresses.
Overall, the authors did a decent job with the historical aspects of anime. However, I do have to complain that in the section about "Censorship and Localization," they never mentioned the editing of innocuous Japanese references from properties that was rather prevalent in the 1980's (such as calling rice balls other kinds of food if they appear in a shot, and cutting away from Japanese text as quickly as possible).
While I may have a number of issues with The Anime Encyclopedia, I have to say that its most redeeming value is that it provides titles for various anime shows and how they inter-relate. However, I'm not sure that this book in and of itself is worth the money it takes to purchase it. In this day and age of the internet, you are more likely to find more information (not to mention more accurate information) on the fanpages for the various anime properties included in this book. Before putting down any money to purchase The Anime Encyclopedia, try to locate a copy through your local library first and sample it that way.
Worth Reading (good) This is one of the most efficiant and organized books I have ever recieved and is definitely worth reading. Of course with so many anime titles to list, no book or website has them all, but this book is the closest to all of them. Every now and then you find one that is not there but this book is almost guaranteed to answer all your questions about anime.
Only as good as the latest edition There haven't been any major format changes or content revisions since the prior edition. More content has simply been added, which is fine, I suppose.
It's a fun encyclopedia for browsing and perhaps stumbling across an anime you'd never heard of before. However, due to the haphazard and inconsistent amount of detail provided on each entry I wouldn't really recommend this as a serious research tool.
Bought it as a gift. The friend I bought this book for has not put it done since.
I recommend this book especially if you are buying it as a gift and know nothing about Anime.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
