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Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Only recently has anime, Japanese animation, started gaining mainstream recognition in North America. Until the mid-1990s the only information available on anime was primarily in a few magazines and fanzines (Hairston 37). This is not to say that anime was not available here before that time. English-dubbed anime has been on American television since 1963, when Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom was shown on NBC as Astro Boy (Ledoux and Ranney 9). Other than exceptions such as Robotech and Akira though, anime has missed mainstream culture until recently. Now, with popular anime television programs including Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Gundam Wing, and anime films including Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke and Perfect Blue receiving acclaim from critics, anime has begun to enter the North American mainstream. And, with the upcoming releases of films such as The Adolescence of Utena and Jin-Roh, the re-release of Akira in 2001, and the large audience for anime on television, there is no sign that anime's growing popularity is likely to end. This popularity has fostered a very real need for critical analysis of anime.
One of the most recent additions to the handful of books on anime in English is Susan Napier's Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. Of the books on the topic, Napier's is the most academically oriented, directed to "the student doing serious college-level literary criticism and analysis of anime" (Hairston 37). Napier, professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin, focuses on the apocalyptic, the festival, and the elegiac as expressive modes in her analysis. Within this framework, she examines a number of topics, from gender roles to the representation of history. Anime is as diverse in genres as live action media, and Napier looks at twenty-four works from multiple genres including romantic comedy, pornography, science fiction, and drama. The works that she examines are only a fraction of all anime, but, as she admits, it would be "impossible to completely sum up [anime] in a single book" (12). In keeping with Napier's point, this review will focus on her analysis of female characters in anime.