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Anime Interviews: |
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Review by Tasha Robinson
he writers' names may not always be familiar, but their most famous titles should ring bells for any anime and manga fan: Ranma 1/2. Ghost in the Shell. Crying Freeman. Battle Angel. Dirty Pair. Their earlier works, on the other hand--things like Masamune Shirow's Super Wizardly Attack Armor Orion or Hayao Miyazaki's The Adventures of Horus, Prince of the Sun--haven't been imported and are probably, for American readers at least, lost in obscurity.
Hence Cadence Books' collection of interviews, culled from the pages of Animerica magazine, featuring detailed bibliographies as well as candid talks with Japan's brightest anime and manga talents. The artists' resumes are billed as "select" rather than comprehensive, but they contain a great deal of information, including the listed works' original Japanese titles, plot summaries, import status and title (if any), and a variety of other details. Each interview also comes with a variety of black-and-white images from the artists' best-known titles.
The author names themselves are an appreciable roster of 20 of the best-known Japanese writers and filmmakers, at least from a U.S. standpoint. There's Rumiko Takahashi, of Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku fame, and Tenchi Muyo!'s Hiroki Hayashi; Kosuke Fujishima of You're Under Arrest and Sanctuary's Ryoichi Ikegami. But the big surprises are Shirow and Miyazaki--the former well-known as a zealously private recluse, the latter simply not known for speaking at length with English-language publications. (Animerica says their detailed interview is an exclusive.)
Everything you wanted to know but didn't understand Japanese well enough to ask
Anime Interviews is a great resource for anime fans of all flavors. For neonates, it amounts to a bible of worthwhile artists, a veritable checklist of creators to look into. For veterans, it's a detailed series of insights into favorite writers, as told by the writers themselves. From personal anecdotes to production notes, in-jokes to film recommendations, internal philosophies to industry histories, this book is absolutely packed with intimate details about the inside of the anime industry and the inside of its stars' heads.
The quality of the interviews is high overall, though some more than others show clear signs of being conducted by rabid, possibly starstruck fans instead of objective professionals. Some of the many interviewers ask a batch of questions at once, or make definitive statements instead of asking questions, while others seem to be reading from a checklist of questions rather than noticeably interacting with their subject. All, however, come across as deeply informed, down to intricacies of the Japanese language and trivia in their subjects' pasts.
Even beyond the authors' words, Anime Interviews is a useful and enjoyable reference material. It's easy to leaf through, seeing from the pictures how individual artists developed over the years, and making--perhaps for the first time--all the connections between a given artist's diverse works. The topic of this book may be narrow, but the appeal is as broad as the space between one unique creator's mind and the next.
Usually I don't think of reading through encyclopedias as fun. I make an exception in this case. -- Tasha
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