Customer Reviews

Anime: A Guide To Japanese Animation (1958-1988)

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There was a time when this was the best book on anime published outside Japan. Sadly, that time was some point in 1992, and before long, the whole thing was blown out of the water by Trish Ledoux and Helen McCarthy in quick succession. Now, a whole decade along, this Italian classic has finally been translated for the American market, but the age shows. So, too, does the low quality of the production -- parts of this book aren't even in English, but in a weird French-Candian-Italian dialect that makes no sense. Very, very out of date, very very incomplete, and completely superceded by the Stone Bridge Anime Encyclopedia just months after its US publication.

At last the old protoculture book, with Astroboy in the cover like in the original italian version.

You only can call to a book of this kind in this form: a Labour of Love. Really is plenty of information, I was looking for certain obscure reference about the serie "Angel: the girl of the flowers" or the film "The treasure Island", and all was there. You have several indexes: Name in Japanese, Name in English and an Guide index for North America (very usefull all of them) and 1238 films, series & oav to search.

The entries have the following information:
1) Original Title
2) Literal Translation of the original title
3) Production House
4) Category ( adventure, comedy, sci-fi, etc.)
5) Number of episodes (tv series only)
6) Release-date (for movies and OAV), or airing date (series-Tv specials)
7) Distribution house
8) English title ( if translated and available in NorthAmerica) or French
9) Summary, facts, description

In my first appreciation of the book I don't find any mistake, but certainly I'm not a master Otaku, some entries are very basic, but others are very complete, there are more of 400 photos in b&w enough to give you an idea but nothing great, sadly many Japanese Studios doesn't gave the permission to use more. All the years from 1958 to 1988 have a summary that give us an appreciation of the action in Japan and the impact mainly in Italy (we have plenty of references to the anime in Italy but nothing very extent to worried).

I'm sure that this book is not going to disapoint you, this work deserves the congratulations and the support of all the people who love those old series and want a good place to begin a research.

This is a wonderful tool for all animated film works and anime lovers. It is very compete and has all the information we might need. Excellent Book!

This is a older book that only covers up to 1988 but covers those years well. It is in English but was translated from Italian. What that means is that some (and only a few) titles have slightly different names. It gives the history of what was going on with the studios and artists on a yearly basis and then a synopsis of the shows from that year. It's a well done book that I greatly endorse for those who remember the anime from the 60s, the 70s, and the 80's; or those who want to know about them. Particularly the titles we have heard of but didn't get to see here in the States. Some minor frustrations: pictures throughout the book are often NOT related to the text on that page, the index is by the japanese name for the show so it is difficult to find a show if you don't know that name, and some spelling of names are not the same as what is known now.