- Document type
- Book review
- Published
- 16 February 2004
Anime Explosion - The What? Why? Wow! Of Japanese Animation
- Author:
- Patrick Drazen
- Publisher:
- Stone Bridge Press
Animation on DVD
- Author:
- Patrick Drazen
- Publisher:
- Stone Bridge Press
- Review by:
- Jasper Sharp
The big plus of Patrick Drazen's Anime Explosion - The What? Why? Wow! Of Japanese Animation is that it tries to fill in the cultural/historical gaps eschewed by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy's capsule review-based approach in The Anime Encyclopedia. Weighing in at a mammoth two parts, 360 pages and 29 chapters, this tome certainly represents value for money. Focusing on a wide variety of titles, from otaku favourites such as Mobile Suit Gundam, Sailor Moon and Evangelion, to lesser known straight-to-video serials such as Jubei-Chan The Ninja Girl, Drazen provides the background to a wide variety of topics, such as Japan's indigenous Shinto religion, female sex roles, the prevalence of such themes as war and the environment, a good career overview of Miyazaki and the Ghibli crew, and the Pokemon phenomena. Especially useful is the chapter Mukashi Mukashi: From Folktales to Anime, detailing a number of deeply engrained cultural myths that have resurfaced again and again in Japanese pop culture. All of these things make for a great introduction to the subject, and I dare say, there's few people who will come away from it without learning something new. But generally Drazen's book is pitched more in favour of the complete novice, and anyone with more than a passing knowledge of Japanese language or culture may find that the author's tendency of stating the obvious, or constantly falling back on that old standby of "cultural differences" to be a little unsatisfactory.
Availability
Anime Explosion - The What? Why? Wow! Of Japanese Animation
Stone Bridge Press
Andy Mangels' Animation on DVD, as the title suggests, does not only concern itself with Japanese animation, but is actually a guide of every animated DVD yet released in the US. It's worthy of inclusion here if only for the fact that a huge number of the 1600 listings are from Japan, drawing attention to the wide variety of titles currently available in the States, including lesser known OAV series such as Ranma 1/2, and Martian Successir Nadesico, and features such as Gisaburo Sugii's Night on The Galactic Railroad (a 1985 adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa's 1927 novel). Unfortunately the focus on the US-market does mean that a host of Ghibli titles which have not yet made it onto the home viewing market, including Spirited Away fall outside the scope of the book.
But even outside of the Japanese anime content this tome is diverse and informative enough to be recommended to even the most casual animation fan. The concise introduction informs us that the first technical stop-motion short film was made by an Englishman, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, in 1899, using matchsticks, giving us a fascinating timeline leading all the way up through Max Fleischer and Walt Disney, Osamu Tezuka to the latest CGI blockbusters. Mangels lets us know exactly how much of these we can currently get our grubby little hands on, and within minutes of opening the book, I had logged onto to Amazon with my credit card at the ready. The scope is amazing, from obvious recent offerings as Waking Life, Powerpuff Girls, Ice Age and Wallace and Gromit, to barely remembered favourites from my own childhood such as the partially animated The Water Babies (1978), Dr Seuss, and the classic original 70s TV series of Spiderman and Battle of the Planets (aka Gatchaman), all the way through to more broader definitions of what constitutes animation in the form of the educational BBC CGI modelled documentary Walking With Dinosaurs. There's a "Mature/Adult" section at the back, mostly filled with Japanese titles such as Perfect Blue and Nine O' Clock Woman, as well as The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. Harking back to the time when there was a hell of a lot more out there than the standardised Disney product, we've also such early classics as Felix The Cat and Max and David Fleisher's The Complete Superman Collection, from the 40s, spreading the net further afield to less orthodox titles as the four volumes that make up Masters of Russian Animation, Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation, Art and Jazz in Animation: The Cosmic Eye, The Best of Bulgarian Animation, stop-motion classics from the Czech directors Jiri Trnka and Jan Svankmajer, and a host of releases compiled from the archives of The National Film Board of Canada. For me, the most fascinating sounding disk was The Cameraman's Revenge and Other Fantastic Tales, a series of stop-motion puppet productions, and apparently "animated insect carcasses" from the 1910s and 20s from Lithuanian filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz. A highly recommended addition to any film lover's book shelf.
Availability
Animation on DVD
Stone Bridge Press