It’s been a while since I read a nonfiction book about anime. A couple of years ago, I read Anime: A History by Johnathan Clements and found it enjoyable (though admittedly, I never got around to doing a prose review here—just a video review). Well, I’ve ended up coming across another overview book on Anime—this time from the hosts of the Ghibliotheque podcast, appropriately titled The Ghibliotheque Guide to Anime, so I figured it was worth a read.
The Ghibliotheque Guide To Anime, as the title suggests, is meant to serve as an introduction to anime as a medium, focusing primarily on film, rather than getting into TV series, and setting the limitation of one film per director (though they fudge things a little bit when it comes to anthology films), with additional notes on each film covering where you can jump off from there. The list of film’s covered generally covers a considerable portion of anime history, from the ’60s to the present day, from as far back as Horus, Prince of the Sun, up to Promare.
Each entry has a description of the film itself, along with its history, accompanied by a review of the film by the hosts of the podcast, all of which are accompanied by stills from the film, plus recommendations for future viewing. The description of the film and the history of it and its director does serve to contextualize the place in the director’s career a bit. However, I do feel like there are some gaps in the coverage that I wish had gotten a little more space.
Additionally, and I do feel a little weird saying this, there’s a bit too much of a focus on what’s recently in print and available for streaming or digital purchase, and an absence of earlier titles to expand out the work. There’s no representation of Osamu Dezaki’s directorial work, for example. While Ninja Scroll is certainly the most famous of Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s directorial works, at this point I’d hesitate to use that as the work that I’d introduce him to new anime fans with – especially considering that Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Demon City Shinjuku are available as quality examples of his newer and older work (respectfully).
There’s a sense that the authors of The Ghibliotheque Guide to Anime are trying to consciously avoid picking works from larger franchises in an attempt to avoid giving viewers extra viewing to go with, and then making exceptions for the Rebuild of Evangelion because they need something for Hideaki Anno and Castle of Cagliostro because they don’t just want to go with a Ghibli movie for Hayao Miyazaki. This is also all aggravated by the “Recommended future viewing” portion being painfully short. It gives a couple paragraphs with a few names without getting into what they’re about, outside of maybe a sentence giving a thematic link.
Does this make it a bad book? No, not even close. If you’ve got a relative who is wondering “what the heck this anime stuff is” or if you know a cinephile who has only waded into the ankle-deep waters of anime through Ghibli and want to get them to go up to their knees – it’s good recommended reading for them. However, and I say this reluctantly, as someone who hates gatekeeping, this isn’t swimming. This isn’t even floating.
A good introductory film studies book is a life vest or a float board to help you get into deeper waters. This isn’t that. This is sitting down in the shallow end of the pool for a soak while watching other people swim. Maybe by watching them you’ll get motivated to get up and move into deeper waters – but to do that you’ll have to go with someone else to get that float board. To the book’s credit, there are some recommended readings at the back of the book that could guide you to that someone else, but I almost wonder if you’d be better off just going to those recommended readings first.
If you do decide to pick it up, The Ghibliotheque Guide to Anime is available from Amazon and Bookshop.org. Buying anything through those links will help support the site.
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