Anime for Academic Libraries

My soapbox

Anime has become a part of American popular culture. Japanese animated motion pictures have captured our imaginations, and are also capturing a growing block of television broadcasting time. Saturday morning "cartoons" have been revolutionized by the Pokémon craze, but also by programming such as the Cartoon Network's "Toonami" which introduced anime serials such as Dragonball, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Inu-Yasha and Naruto.

Kid stuff? Maybe, but these programs familiarize millions of American viewers with the look, style, and themes of anime, which is a much deeper and richer art form. Anime and manga (Japanese comic books) have a continuing influence on popular culture, American animated features such as The Iron Giant, and live action motion pictures such as The Matrix. Several anime have had limited theatrical releases here in the U.S., such as Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime), the Academy Award winning Spirited Away, and Millenium Actress. There are well-established anime clubs at dozens of universities across the country, such as the Bucknell Anime Society. There are a growing number of annual conventions devoted entirely to anime, with several such as OTAKON drawing over 20,000 fans. Few other categories of motion pictures generate this sort of intense interest and fan devotion, and few are so thoroughly ignored by academic libraries!

Resources for librarians and faculty

Courses

There are a small but growing number of academic courses which include the study of anime. Dr. Susan Napier of the Asian Studies Center at the University of Texas at Austin has taught a course titled "World of Japanese Animation". She is also the author of a new book mentioned below. Her work continues to receive attention, such as the recent Feature Story: An Anime Explosion on the UT web pages.
Two faculty from the University of Texas at Dallas incorporated anime into their course A&H 3300 "Natural Wonders". Dr. Pam Gossin and Dr. Marc Hairston included a review of Hayao Miyazaki's epic film Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.

Bibliography

There are a few english-language books that attempt to analyze Japanese animated motion pictures, allowing us to study anime as film.

The following are a good start on a library collection supporting the study of Japanese anime. As of September 2007 all of these titles are available through Amazon. The encyclopedia by Clements and McCarthy, and Ledoux's Complete Anime Guide are particularly helpful as selection aides. Clements offers synopsis and commentaries for over 2,000 anime movie and TV series titles. Drazen, McCarthy, Napier, and Poitras also provide background and information for the study of anime as art form. The Cinema Anime collection is particularly interesting, but a challenging read.

Building an Anime Collection

The Bertrand Library at Bucknell University has a unique relationship with the Bucknell Anime Society; each year the student club *donates* the money provided to them by the Bucknell Student Government for programming. Club members vote to recommend certain anime movies and TV series for inclusion in the collection, and these titles become a permanent legacy to future club members! We have cataloged the anime videocassettes and DVDs purchased for the Library as a study collection. The Library of Congress subject heading is "animated films Japan," to retrieve an updated list of our holdings.

Librarians planning to build an anime library should keep in mind some of the distinct types or genrés of these films. There are commonly understood categories such as fantasy and science fiction, mystery, and even gothic horror. But there are also motifs unique to anime, such as "mecha" anime which feature giant robots. More importantly, there are anime genré and motifs that reflect their origins in Japanese culture and artistic expression. Fighting robots and the motivations and ideals explored in mecha seem to be accessible to even young American audiences. The exploration of the samurai code and Japanese legends in a complex series of anime episodes such as the Hakkenden make for more challenging viewing.

Web Links

Current Events

Please send questions or comments to:

James A. Van Fleet
vanfleet@bucknell.edu
URL: http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/vanfleet/anime.html

Updated: September 27, 2007

Portrait by John Van Fleet
artist for the Marvel Comics series Typhoid,
and DC Comics Batman: the Chalice

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