by Brigitte Koyama-Richard
Rizzoli, $49.95, 245 pages
This excellent book serenely documents the historical significance of Japanese anime from early work on scrolls to the popular Pokemon children’s series. Japanese Animation: From Painted Scrolls to Pokemon by Brigitte Koyama-Richard is the definitive work on this phenomena. She includes interviews with some of the greatest artists in the anime world, delving into their motivations, inspirations and work processes. From Laurent Mannoni to Suzuki Shinichi, from Nonsense Story to Hello Kitty every detail is laid out and dissected for the reader to view at a global level. Influences originating in China from as far back as the seventeenth century have peppered our globe and given back to the world an entire other genre of art. Even if anime is not your thing, this tome is a fascinating historical documentation of grand proportions accommodating all cultures and schools of thought in the art world. Impressive, brilliantly portrayed and elusively fascinating Japanese Animation: From Painted Scrolls to Pokemon is the quintessential display of the past and present depiction of anime in its rawest form.