FEATURED BOOK
 Anime
Poster Art (2003.) Tokyo: Cocoro Books.
For
anime fans outside of Japan, sometimes it’s easy to forget
that an anime film is more than just a product for purchase.
While anime films are of course released on DVD in Japan, most
receive at least a short theatrical run beforehand. Even short
films, such as Voices of a Distant Star (which clocks
in at around half an hour), get the big screen treatment. The
public viewing of films is a shared, communal experience; seeing
anime films in a theater is different from seeing it in one’s
own home. Anime Poster Art highlights this often-overlooked
experience of watching anime in the theater by cataloging the
public face of the anime film.
The
book begins with an introduction by Patrick Macias, frequent
writer on Japanese film and author of TokyoScope. The
intro starts by tracing a brief history of anime, from Alakazam
the Great (1960) to the present day. (At over forty years
old, Alakazam is also the earliest poster featured
in the book.) Much like in Japan Edge (to which Macias
was also a contributor), this essay emphasizes the revolutionary
potential of anime films on the imaginations of their viewing
audience. Macias concludes by stating that even though anime
is currently rising in popularity and gaining international
acclaim, the medium is actually going through a slump, as "the
form itself is no longer cutting edge or attracting new talent."
Anime needs fresh blood in order to continue thriving as an
art form. Macias suggests using the book as a way to re-fire
our imaginations, to see where anime has been in the past, so
we can see (and help to shape) where it is going.
Featuring
approximately 100 posters of anime films, the entries in the
book are grouped under general thematic headings like "Super
Heroes," "Leading Ladies," "Robot Wars,"
and "Tall Dark Strangers." Other chapters include
"Retro-Specs," featuring films from the 1960s and
70s, and one section of the films of Studio Ghibli. Spaced throughout
the book are page-length features on posters as collectables
in Japan, a very brief history of anime (including a chart of
the top twenty top grossing anime films; the results include
six films from Studio Ghibli, five Pokemon films, three
Detective Conan films, and three Doraemon
films), anime merchandise, and how the main creative figures
in anime relate to each other.
The
book tries to showcase a representative sample of anime films
over the last forty years, and many of the films should be familiar
to foreign fans of the medium. The editors even pulled out some
relatively obscure film gems. While Lupin, Gundam,
and Evangelion all make appearances, it is refreshing
to see older and more obscure titles like Oshin and
Himitsu no Akko-chan. My main complaint about the book
is the sometimes questionable division of space among the titles—for
example, there are the same number of pages devoted to posters
of Urusei Yatsura (one of the foremost anime franchises)
as there are to Slayers (a franchise undeniably less
important in the history of anime).
Of
particular interest to the anime scholar are the translations
of the Japanese tag lines. If the poster uses a catchy phrase
(such as “Burn red hot! Joe!” for the theatrical
release of Tomorrow’s Joe), the poster reprints
the phrase alongside the poster in both the original Japanese
and in English translation. Also of use is the index of films,
which consists of three separate indices – one in Japanese,
one with romanized Japanese titles, and one with English titles.
All
of this makes for a book that is both beautiful to look at and
helpful to the anime scholar. While not a comprehensive visual
history of anime, Anime Poster Art is a unique resource
for those examining the design, marketing, or consumption of
anime. The book serves its purpose wonderfully as a colorful
and informative look at an aspect of anime that sometimes goes
unnoticed.
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