Watching Anime, Reading Manga

Watching Anime, Reading Manga by Fred Patten, 2004, Stone Bridge Press

It is unlikely that anyone outside of Japan knows more about Japanese animation than Fred Patten, who has been following it consistently since the 1970s, and was involved in the first fan club for Japanese animation. Mr. Patten has met and become friends with famous anime and manga creaters, including Osamu Tezuka and Monkey Punch. This book is a collection of articles that Mr. Patten has written about anime and manga over the years, no more and no less.

The fact that this book simply reprints previously published articles is both a strength and a weakness. The strength comes from the incredible breadth of coverage that this provides. You will read about early manga, the problems with romanizing character names, and the problems of getting anime into theaters in America. You will read about Japanese wartime propoganda animations, the different ways that comic books developed in Japan as opposed to America, and early attempts to get anime on American television. The weakness comes from the fact that many of the articles cover similar information. You will read that Osamu Tezuka was the god of anime and manga a good dozen times, and you will read different articles about early TV anime almost as many times. This is simply a weakness of the format, and thankfully it is acknowledged up front. While it is annoying, you can either skip over stuff you have already read or you could simply look for slight differences between different articles, as more information comes to light and earlier errors get corrected.

Interestingly enough, the articles that provided the most new information for me were the articles about manga in Japan, especially Mangamania! from a 1984 edition of The Comics Journal. That was probably the best overall view of the manga market I have ever read, and I would love to see it updated to bring it into current times. Alas, that wasn't the book's purpose. Bottom line, if you are interested in the history of American anime and manga fandom, this book is priceless. If you are a casual fan, however, this book probably won't hold your interest for very long.

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