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FEATURED BOOK
 Anime
Trivia Quizbook 1: From Easy to Otaku Obscure
by Ryan Omega
Stone Bridge Press, 2000
Anime Trivia Quizbook 2: Torments from the Top 20
by Ryan Omega and Scott Rux
Stone Bridge Press, 2002
I don’t
think it’s too much of a stretch to say that academics,
like fans, tend to rejoice in minutiae. The further one progresses
in academia, the more specialized one becomes. This is why I
thought that I, as both a scholar and a fan, was ready to tackle
the two Anime Trivia Quizbooks published by Stone Bridge
Press. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed by the two books,
although much of that disappointment stems from the fact that
they weren’t quite what I was expecting.
I was
expecting tomes stuffed with trivia about all aspects of anime,
and in that regard the books were certainly what I was looking
for. The first book breaks the questions down by type, such
as “Science Fiction & Mecha,” “Romance,”
and “Translations” while the second divides the
chapters by anime series. There are 500 questions in the first
book and 410 questions in the second, making for nearly one
thousand anime-related questions with which to stump your friends.
And
stumping your anime friends seems to be what these books are
all about. According to the intro of the first book, many of
these questions were originally developed for a live game show
at Fanimecon. Reading through the questions, I can see that
they retain a very off-the-cuff feel with their asides and occasional
smilies that are more appropriate for an internet forum than
the printed page. Still, if you’re looking for material
you can use to quiz other anime otaku, these are the books for
you.
With
that said, I don’t think these are the books for me --
I should have paid more heed to the word “quizbook”
in the titles. I thought that since they would be good sources
of the aforementioned minutiae they might also make good reference
books. As I read through them, though, I found myself to be
continually distracted by the writing style, which was far too
flippant for my liking. (This also resulted in some trivia questions
that weren't very clear.)
Perhaps
books like these are indicative of the separation that currently
exists between anime researchers and anime fans. I found one
of the asides by Scott Rux in the second book to be particularly
amusing: “As anime continues its acceptance into the mainstream
American culture, I see, in a few decades from now, some college-level
film studies student submitting a graduate thesis on the under
story of Evangelion. It seems silly now, but, in a
way, to me at least, it doesn’t seem impossible.”
Of course, to me it doesn’t seem silly at all. It is this
attitude, conveyed through the writing style, which kept me
from enjoying the Anime Trivia Quizbooks more than
I did.
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