Customer Reviews
A MIGHTY TOME OF INFORMATION IMEASURABLE - By: Red Queen, 19 Jun 2008 
Finding an informative & concise book on Anime can be difficult & expensive. I was unsure if this book was simply a movie guide rather than a resource about Anime & its complex history & themes.
After taking the plunge I was pleasantly surprised to find this book to be both. There are an estimated three thousand entries, each giving specific information about a particular Anime such as themes, influences & a brief summary of the characters & stories. Each entry is fascinating in its own right providing a wealth of information that can be surprising, funny & a little strange, especiallly when looking at Anime such as Urotskidoji. Reading entries can be addictive as they are also linked to other Anime within the book that are similar or have other links such as being by the same director.
This revised & expanded edition also has Thematic Entries which provide the reader with a wealth of information on the various themes explored within Anime. This includes entries discussing Horror & Monsters, Comedy & Fantasy & Fairy tales. There are also other entries that explore the Anime industry itself such as Censorship & localization which are equallly as fascinating as those entries discussing Science Fiction & Robots.
This book is a must own for any fan of Japanese Animation. The entries about each individual Anime are clear, concise & well written providing the reader with invaluable information. The Thematic entries help make this book an indispensable guide & help put the numerous entries in to context. Each Thematic entry can vary in length from half a page to several pages, yet each entry provides clear & detailed information about an industry that is full of strange & wonderful ideas. A truly fantastic book that you will read for hours & hours & hours....
Amazing, for now :) - By: Mr. W. G. Whitley, 17 Jul 2007 I have only purchased this book today & so should probably take time to consider its usefulness, but at first glances it seems to deliver exceedingly well on expectations.
I have been a fan of anime since 2003 now so I have had some time to familiarise myself with quite a few titles, from fairly well known ones like Ghibli's to lesser knowns I've stumbled across from friends or random showings at conventions. This book's listed alll the one's I can think of, & plenty more besides. Not alll get pages & pages of text, but hey, you can't expect the authors to have watched & deeply analysed EVERYTHING, & there's a lot of interesting & enlightening stuff here.
There's a slight review in many of the descriptions, usuallly enough to serve as a warning or reccomendation. Personallly I'm reallly enjoying the commentary, I think it's quite funny in parts... but then if you've watched much anime you'll know it can be quite hard to do a significant number of descriptions seriously, & when you include more adult anime - well, it was surreal enough already.
There's also some commentry on themes of anime & other stuff, which is probably reallly interesting & useful for people properly interested, but I've spent most of my time looking up anime I've watched so far. I did read a bit about ratings of anime (as in people tuned in, or however it's measured these days). That was very illuminating, I'd always assumed anime must be highly rated in Japan, & also I completely bought that GTO (live action) was the highest rated series in Japan. Surprise!
But reallly, this is a very good book, & VERY UP TO DATE considering others I've read. It's up to sometime in 2006: 1917 to 2006 doesn't seem a bad span to me!
I can imagine a book like this might confuse a newcomer to anime, given the amount of content. But also, each description will ususallly contain a mention of an anime of similar plot or style, giving thozse exploring the genre a bit of a tour, without having to ask the advice of someone else who m,ight have COMPLETELY different tastes?
Anyway, like I've said, I've only had this book a day, so maybe I'm speaking to soon. All I know is that having had it this long has given me more motivation to write a review than I think I've had in a long time.
