The relationship between this blog and Jonathan Clements’ Anime: A History has always been somewhat complicated. When the former started and I began delving into older productions, the latter proved to be an essential resource: it was, among other things, the starting point for the History of TMS series. But, as time went by and as I started to pick sources by myself, first in English and then in Japanese, I was quick to dismiss Clements’ work: it was too general, as opposed to my own more specific research, and its 2013 publication date made it far too outdated to the young fan, researcher and student that I was — or so I thought back then.
Ten years later, as soon as I heard about a second, updated edition, I knew I’d have to review it. It also appears as a way to return the courtesy, as this website (or rather its author) has the honor to be cited in the acknowledgements. Anyways, as time went by, I did not have the chance to conduct the close comparison between the first and second editions that I had envisioned. I am ashamed to say that it is only now that I could finally take the time to re-read Clements’ work from beginning to end. I am not quite sure what is its reputation in either fandom or academia (an issue I will come back to later), but I suppose that publishing a review not so long after Clements himself has written a new book on anime is somewhat timely.
Updating the book, answering questions and avoiding partial perspectives
With this out of the way, I must start by highlighting the quality of Anime: A History. It is quite thoroughly researched, especially when considering the date of the first edition in the case of the early chapters. That it proves lacking sometimes is unavoidable, especially in this kind of publication: there will never be enough pages, and that’s not always something writers have full control over. In any case, coverage and criticism of primary sources to such a precise degree on such a broad chronological range is both impressive and welcome. Moreover, some of Clements’ analyses are remarkably sharp and on-point: such is the case of the contextualization of the Nichidô buyout by Toei through a comparison with Tadahito Mochinaga’s case and an analysis of Mochinaga’s own situation and motivations (p.136); or highlighting Haruka Tachicho’s ambiguous position within anime and SF fandoms during the debate he initiated over Gundam between 1980 and 1982 (p.236).
In that regard, the lack of substantial updates between the first and second edition is not a fundamental fault: new memoirs and interviews have, of course, been published between 2013 and 2023 (and between 2023 and 2026), but their absence here is not damning in my opinion. Not a fundamental fault, but a fault nevertheless. For instance, more attention could have been provided to the many secondary sources published in Japan between the two editions. This would have, in some cases, helped answer some of the questions Clements left unanswered, and in others, compensated for some of the more central blind spots in his research.
I will highlight some more examples over the course of this review as they relate with other issues, but I will start with a few here.
I was quite surprised to read that “there is remarkably little published about the actual collapse of Mushi Production” (p.178). This certainly applied in 2013, but did not hold by 2023, with at least 3 major Japanese books touching more-or-less directly on the subject: Yasumasa Makimura and Tetsuhisa Yamada’s biography of Yoshinobu Nishizaki (2017), Yûsuke Nakagawa’s synthesis on the first 10 years of Japanese TV animation (2020) and Kaori Chiba’s book on the origins of Heidi and of the World Masterpiece Theater (2017). I am only citing the most obvious, accessible references here, as more obscure and specific (which is also to say, limited) ones abound; as someone who abandoned the endeavor midway, I am well aware of their limitations, but also of the very real possibility for a serious, invested researcher to write a detailed history of Mushi’s last years. The existence of dark areas is something historians must reconcile with, but it should not feed into pessimism or lack of knowledge of the sources.
Although one I am particularly invested in, this is admittedly a minor issue at the scale of the entire book : after all, I am not expecting Anime: A History to fill all the blindspots in the research. A more important problem is in perspective: Clements’ lack of consideration for, or mischaracterization of, audiences. Influenced, no doubt, by his own experience in the “anime business” and his lens of analysis which privileges the “ownership-access chain”, which reduces actors along it to mere users and not spectators or producers-consumers, Clements fails to see anime’s audiences as anything more than abstract data in business strategies or, at the other end of the spectrum, what individual testimonies allow us to know of it. Asides from such methodological blindspots, some of it could have been resolved with the help of Japanese sources on the topic: let me provide two examples.
The first relates to animation in the 1920s and 1930s: great lengths are dedicated (quite understandably) to technical and industrial evolutions (the lengthy discussions of the relationship between animation and the rest of the film industry are fascinating and it is disappointing that this theme disappears later in the book). American influence on Japanese works is evoked, but aside from educative or propagandistic instructions, little to nothing is said about who watched films and for what purposes. But all of these topics have been investigated in thorough detail, quantitatively, historically and sociologically, in Hideyuki Sadakane’s groundbreaking work (2021) which discusses the place of cinema and animation in prewar consumer culture, children’s consumption of it, and the comparative distribution of domestic and foreign productions in Japan.
Later on, when discussing the emergence of anime fandom throughout the 1970s, Clements claims to avoid the pitfalls of “the narrative of anime history… recorded largely by male observers” (p.205). But in doing so, he seems to largely reconduct pre-existing gendered genre categories: boys watch robot and science-fiction shows while girls watch magical girl and World Masterpiece Theater series. In his narrative, “negotiated consumption”, while it exists, is the exception. On one hand, the existence of such consumption, in which actual audiences never overlap with what producers expect them to be, is a banality for audience studies; on the other, the key demographic and strategic role of female fans, notably of SF works, at the turn of the 1970s, has been highlighted many times. While far more qualitative than Sadakane’s work on the prewar period, Eiji Otsuka’s research on the anime boom (2016) documents it without any possible doubt.
Whether these are fundamental issues or not may depend on the reader and their expectations. After all, it may seem easy to criticize an author for not always having all the perfect sources. Such issues do, however, relate to one of Anime: A History’s fundamental characteristics: that is, its methodological options to favor “technological determinism” (viii) and avoid narrativization as much as possible — two options that are respectable in themselves, but with which I fundamentally disagree and bear the entire book prejudice.
On writing history and making choices
Upon reading Anime: A History, two things immediately struck and interested me: its table of contents and introduction. The first, and with it the apparent focus of the entire book, provides an original approach to anime’s history as a whole — that is, it is a chronology that is both different from established, dominant ones, and justified by the overall research project. The introduction, on the other hand, is very rich and methodologically very challenging; the sections on “anime as events” and “sources as performance” in particular are essential reading.
The structure of this introduction is quite revealing about the book as a whole: refusing to take any part in the debate over “what we talk about when we talk about anime”, it is both a review and a criticism of pre-existing approaches. While it is sometimes more rhetorical than anything (this particularly applies to the section on “form”, more below), the main issue is that it is just that: Clements makes no choices, he defends no particular point of view and seems to believe that doing so would be falling into some sort of subjectivity, and therefore commit one of the historical mistakes that he lists (p.5). This, in turn, fuels his distrust for historical narrative or “emplotment”: “we must be watchful for the anime narrative that decides to tell the entire story in a single mode that might elbow information aside if it inconveniently breaks the spell” (p.29).
This attitude is particularly understandable when compared to that of major Japanese historians. Compare, for instance, the structure of Anime: A History with two contemporary histories of anime written by Japanese authors: Nobuyuki Tsugata’s History of Japanese Animation (2022) and Ryûsuke Hikawa’s Turning Points in Japanese Animation (2023). With only few variations, both authors seem to tell the same story, reiterating the same key dates, titles, actors and events (1963, Tezuka and Astro Boy; 1974, Nishizaki and Yamato against Takahata and Heidi; 1995, Anno and Evangelion, etc.). Needless to say, thorough criticism of such practice is more than welcome; but I’m not sure Clements’ way of conducting it is the right one.
On the basic, surface-level of form, this does a disservice to readability and accessibility: there is no clear throughline in the book, and little continuity between chapters. Themes explored in a certain time period disappear in others without any proper justification. This would puzzle readers that are not knowledgeable with anime history as well as those who are. Let me turn, for instance, to the aforementioned theme of the connection between the film and animation industries: it is a thread developed thoroughly for the 1920s but abandoned later. Maybe it could have been relevant to pick it up again for the 1980s, with the renewed development of anime feature films, in a completely different context for the film and entertainment industries; or, of course, in the 2010s-2020s and the central role of compilation movies in the anime ecosystem.
While the internal structure of a single chapter may make sense, as it more-or-less follows each step in the ownership-access chain (this especially applies to the last 4, those added to the new edition, contributing to their lack of readability), the link between chapters and the choice of topics might appear arbitrary — far more than if it had been justified by a narrative or editorial perspective. Indeed, the neutrality Clements claims does not equal objectivity: it risks falling into an even more dangerous form of arbitrariness that does not even clarify its choices. While the book doesn’t fall into such a trapping’s logical evolution — purely listing facts –, its overly-critical approach seems to make it miss key evolutions.
At multiple points, Clements warns against an unreasonable quest for historical “firsts”, as it is often motivated by actors’ own agendas and often leads to miss other important events, leading to what he terms “errors of tradition”. This is perfectly justified and a kind of discipline every historian should have. However, Clements seems to fall into the opposite trap: by highlighting very real and often overlooked continuities, he misses key changes between periods or contexts (an attitude I must confess I have myself been prone to). Let me provide two examples regarding the topic of “outsourcing”.
The first relates to outsourcing within Japan, i.e. a Japanese studio outsourcing part of the production to another. In chapters 5 and 6, Clements highlights the existence of freelancing or contractual workers (p.148) and of outsourcing (pp.171-172, p.200) as early as the 1960s. This is, indeed, a form of continuity with the next decade, in which such labor organization became the norm… something that Clements seems to miss entirely! In his discussion of the 1970s (chapter 7), he seems to make a confusion between the “start-up studios” (p.202) that emerged in the wake of Astro Boy, such as Tokyo Movie or Tatsunoko, and those, initially essentially dedicated to subcontracting, that developed some years later in the wake of the crisis of earlier established companies, including A Production, Madhouse or Sunrise.
This could be dismissed as a simple overlook and my remark as splitting hairs. I do not believe this to be the fact, as this apparent confusion feeds into a partial reading of the 1970s as a whole, seen as a period of formal and technical development but continuity in “production, distribution and exhibition”. In other words, Clements misses the turning point that is the crisis of the late 1960s-early 1970s and its consequences on labor and industry organization. His appraisal of the Toei Manga Festivals as a continuity within Toei “continuing without disruption” (p.186) to produce feature-length movies, is a complete misunderstanding of the studio’s evolution post-1963, the impact of Hiroshi Okawa’s death and the overall major changes going on in Japan’s entertainment industries at the time (to go back to updates and sources, such an analysis could have been found very easily in either Tomoya Kimura’s (2020) or Marie Pruvost-Delaspre’s (2021) books on the studio, which only appear to have been cited performatively).
Similar remarks could be made, although surely less strongly, about overseas outsourcing (from a foreign to a Japanese studio) in the 1980s. Obviously, the precedents established by MOM, Mushi Productions and Topcraft in regards to outsourcing for the US are central and not to be overlooked. I wouldn’t even say that Toei and more importantly TMS’ strategy of outsourcing and coproduction in the 1980s is a change as important as that of outsourcing between the 1960s and 1970s. However, with his near-exclusive focus on OVAs, Clements completely misses the discourse of the actors at the time: one of decline, in which critics feared a loss of originality and creativity in TV anime while all the established talents (Dezaki, Miyazaki, etc.) went to work overseas and younger generations of artists privileged OVAs — a situation summed up by Yûichirô Oguro as “anime’s ice age” (2024; this seems to be a category from the time, though I can’t ascertain it at the moment). Certainly, this should fall under scrutiny: was this assessment justified at the time? Is Oguro’s terminology based in reality, or is it biased by his own experience? Clements does not even ask these questions, and seems to completely ignore them.
Beyond the instance of foreign outsourcing, Clements quickly dismisses the major (and, in my view, eminently criticable, which is where I agree with him) historical category of “anime boom” of the early 1980s, thus completely missing that it did end at some point — precisely in 1983, the point when OVAs emerged. Instead, he seems to imply that OVAs represent the continuity and true realization of the anime boom. Here, he fails both to acknowledge the origins of his own narrativization (Hiromichi Masuda’s Understanding Anime Business which frames the “second anime boom” between 1977 and 1991 and traditional otaku historiography, notably Okada Toshio’s account of the period in Introduction to Otakuology) and misses the key characteristic of the period (which is less otaku than anime as a mass phenomenon).
Here, Clements’ claim to “technological determinism” reveals its limitations. His essentially technical view of video makes him miss its other dimensions as an object of aesthetic and economic consumption: he draws the history of OVAs a continuity, completely ignoring the break of the late-1980s, mainly represented by Patlabor, characterized by cheaper unit price, the emergence of true OVA series (and then franchises) and a diminishing formal (and technical) gap between OVA and TV series episodes — without mentioning the changes brought by the video releases of TV series. Like his probable inspiration Masuda, Clements then ignores the social dimension of anime viewership, and notably the increasing segmentation of anime audiences (to oversimplify, TV for children and teens, OVAs for teens and adults, and movies for each demographic) in the 1980-1990s.
The absence of form
Eschewing a focused, narrative history, Clements may seem like he refuses to make any decisive choices about what matters and what doesn’t, and therefore as if he were writing from an impartial, objective point of view. But, as some of the above criticisms should show, the multiplication of perspectives does not mean an absence of perspective. As he admits, Clements overwhelmingly favors technological factors. Not only does it lead him to miss key events or developments, as I have shown with OVAs, it leads him close to self-contradiction: such is the case when discussing the emergence of anime fandom in the US, which is shown to be a complex, multifactorial process made up of social, technological and economical dynamics, from both the US and Japan… Only to conclude on an extremely reductive and determinist take: “The nature of anime fandom, or rather the attitude of anime owners towards fan communities, changes in direct relation to the power of computers” (p.252, my emphasis).
I do not intend to dismiss the importance of technical factors, for which Clements does argue convincingly in many instances. I do doubt, however, that it works well enough as a central explanative factor. Assuming that such a central factor — that is, narrativization or at least explicit problematization — may exist and contribute to better understanding, is there any other that I think would work out better?
To answer this question, we may turn to recent work on manga, particularly Eike Exner’s Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics (2025) and Andrea Horbinski’s Manga’s First Century (2025). While neither book is without its faults (more on that later), they both have explicit, clear-cut approaches and end up being digestible, accessible historical introductions. As such, they suggest two possibilities, both set aside by Clements: one tends towards a history of forms and their processes of production, and the other towards a social history focused on the interaction between media and their socio-historical contexts. I will start from the first one, form, as it is one of the major elements missing from Anime: A History and as I have already touched on the issue of audiences. However, my objective is not to argue for history of forms above all else, or to exclusively defend sakuga discourse (as I know this is how this review may be received): it is essentially to demonstrate that an explicit, assumed perspective is not incompatible with a pluralist approach that, while admitting its necessary limitations, is as totalizing as possible.
Indeed, my issue with the lack of formal consideration in Clements’ book is not just personal frustration, or the impression that something’s missing — though these are very real factors, as I believe that we first encounter anime at the level of form and not as pure social, economic or technical processes. More than supplementing for a lack in content, a focus on form could provide the kind of problematization and continuity that is missing in Anime: A History.
The present argument for form is further fueled by an addition to the second edition: a section on “forms and formalism” in the introduction, which even includes a mention of sakuga fandom as representative of such an approach. But, as is often the case, it misrepresents sakuga as a simply descriptive approach to “single moments of animation, one frame at a time” (p.13). Whether Clements adequately describes a so-called “sakuga community” or approach is not the point: whether one calls it sakuga or not, it illustrates that he does not see the potential of such a method, which is far more important to his book than any prejudices he might have on any fandom.
Let us first begin by a definition of “form” that, while general, would try to be more accurate than Clements’ one, which is focused on visuals (“what it is [the viewer] see[s] in front of them”) and formulated as to be dismissive of its subjectivity (“what they bring to a text, and what that text apparently brings to them”). Here, I will instead define form as the aesthetic (that is, perceivable: sound, visuals, story, etc.) qualities of a work that make it identifiable — thus ensuring both its individuality and reproducibility. In other words, the “form” of a creative work can be understood as its “style”. In such a historiographical context, it is vital that form is not purely abstract or general, but that it constitutes a criteria for both distinction and comparison with other works prior, contemporary and posterior to it. In other words, there is something distinguishable, objective about it.
This matters because at least part of Clements’ dismissal of form seems to come from his belief that it is subjective and therefore does not fall under the criteria for serious historical scrutiny. This is apparent in the comparison between two descriptions of Astro Boy’s style and its influence on anime, one largely technical by Eiichi Yamamoto, and the other more aesthetic by Ryôsuke Takahashi: “Yamamoto’s points are empirically testable, and indeed have been tested, by researchers counting the pull-cels, stills and recycled frames in an episode of Astro Boy… Takahashi’s claims are far more impressionistic and unsupported, except in the sense that they are the memoir of a man who was undoubtedly present when the stylistics of television anime took shape” (p.169).
One could argue that this dismissal is largely rhetorical, as Clements spends the entire following page discussing Takahashi’s criteria. But he only does so with comparison to other testimonies or by discussing Takahashi’s argument in a logical vacuum (as “provocative” or lacking examples…). That is, Clements acts as if the work itself didn’t exist and its qualities weren’t readily visible — or, at least, not in the way he approves of, that is through a painstaking quantitative method consisting of counting frames. Certainly, there is some value in empirically testing Tezuka, Yamamoto and others’ statements regarding the framerate of Astro Boy (and I have done so myself); but what does an average of “1.89 cels per second” actually say about Astro Boy, the effects it tried, succeeded or missed to achieve? What does it tell us about the intent of those who made it, and the state of mind of those who saw it?
In simply comparing testimonies without truly arbitrating between them and ignoring the basic reality of the work these testimonies are supposed to account for, Clements falls into nominalism and, under the guise of a supposedly objective or neutral description, fails to really explain anything.
In other instances, rather than a distrust of form, it is insufficient engagement with it that undermines Clements’ argument. This is particularly the case of his discussion of Toei’s early feature films, a topic I’ve come back to the repeatedly on this blog, especially when it comes to stylistic evolution and artistic assessment.
The first instance of it is in the (otherwise excellent) discussion of The White Serpent, described in the following terms: “It was also perhaps the first Japanese cartoon to successfully imitate the characteristics of a Disney movie in terms of length, look, sound and style” (p.141). Aside from length, I find this assertion quite baffling: it does not take a particularly skilled eye to see that, in pure terms of animation quality (fluidity, complexity, expressiveness), even The White Serpent’s best moments are a world away from prior or contemporary Disney features. More fundamentally, I have here just assumed what “the characteristics of a Disney movie” could be — “animation quality”. But Clements does not make his assumptions explicit, thus uncritically repeating Okawa’s promotional argument for Toei as “Disney of the East” and providing an erroneous impression of The White Serpent, which actually showcases much more proximity to Nichidô’s late output than with any Disney film (another argument Clements could have picked up from Pruvost-Delaspre’s research). This is even more questionable when one considers that actually confronting with The White Serpent and acknowledging its formal limitations, that is what makes it unique, would have considerably strengthened Clements’ already convincing argument that the film’s value essentially lies in its nature as an event — its attaining so many “firsts” and proving the viability of Toei’s ambitions.
Similar criticism could be made regarding a later Toei feature, Saiyûki, of which Clements says that it “proved less intricate in animation than some of its predecessors” (p.159). There are, once again, no details regarding the exact meaning of that statement, which I also find puzzling. I have already made the argument for Saiyûki as the true coming-of-age of most of Toei’s animators, the sign of a break with Nichidô’s style, and as a striking demonstration of things to come in later Japanese works — including framerate modulation, limited animation, intricate work on effects animation… This could also be argued with Clements’ own methods, that is comparing testimonies: the break with Saiyûki’s formal and organizational liberty embraced in Toei’s following feature, the appalling Anju and Zushiomaru (on which Clements’ and my taste once again seem to part), was so strong that it partly motivated early union activity in the studio discussed by Clements himself (p.148).
Examples could be found elsewhere in the book, but I do not want to imply either that Clements is simply bad at discussing form: there are some excellent analyses from time to time, such as the discussion of technical experimentations at Tatsunoko in the 1970s and their formal consequences (p.203). Here, Clements’ technological focus proves at least partly on-point.
So far, I have shown that Clements’ dismissal of form stems from an error of method and leads to misinterpretations of facts or sequences of facts. Now, I may show how form as a core point of the analysis may provide the kind of cohesion and sense of totality that is lacking in Clements’ work. To that end, and to avoid any caricatural formalism, it is necessary to bring back an element strikingly absent from Anime: A History: society and social processes.
The remarks I have made regarding Clements’ dismissal of audiences apply to social history as a whole. Except for the early chapters, there is little to no discussion of the social, economical, and ideological contexts (not to say structures) in which anime’s history unfolded. This leads Clements not only to technological determinism, but also to a form of historical individualism. Identifying actors is, of course, one of the key tasks of history, and Clements often showcases how much processes can be collective. But what people do too often seems to happen in a vacuum: people do things, and these things simply happen.
Except that, sometimes, things don’t happen — or at least not how those who made it happen intended. This may be due to the actors’ own failures or incompetence, but also sometimes to events they couldn’t foresee or simply resistance from the overall social world they and their works inhabit. I believe that history, especially media or art history, should account for both successes and failures, what happened and what didn’t. Certainly, Clements often discusses nescience — how works, people or events have been forgotten or put to the sidelines of history — but he rarely discusses the dynamics behind it. Such dynamics have, however, been discussed by scholars such as Frederick Litten, who acknowledges that some works may be counted as “dead ends and cut-off lines” but that their failures can be, in themselves, historically and historiographically productive:
Thus the question might arise whether the three pioneers’ effect on Japanese animation might have been similar to that of Katsudō shashin. That would certainly be an exaggeration. Yet they did not really contribute much to the establishment of local animated movies as a regular part of the Japanese movie industry – in contrast to niches such as advertising, education and what might be called “special effects” – to say nothing of an “anime industry”. Except that they had been the first and that they had assistants, such as Yamamoto Sanae with Kitayama and Ōfuji Noburō with Kōuchi, who were among those who helped keep alive the dream of Japanese animated movies as a viable product in the following decades” (p.117)
This is where form may once again come in. While not being the only factor, it may provide a key entry point to understand works’ circulation (failed or successful) within society. For instance, when discussing Gundam (p.213), Clements simply explains its “realism” and that of later “real robots” series as the result of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s individual artistic decisions. Not only is this a strikingly uncritical and auteurist analysis coming from Clements, it fails to account for Gundam’s novelty and, more importantly, its success. Similarly, Space Battleship Yamato’s popularity is largely attributed to producer Nishikazi’s acumen and ability to mobilize fans — a perfectly correct explanation, which however fails to show why Yamato might have appealed to any fan in the first place.
Here, taking form into account would provide far more than formalism in a vacuum: it would force us to explain how each work’s form is the specific product of a specific socio-historical context, to which it either answered in a certain way or from which it detached itself to create something different, at least partly explaining its success or lack thereof. Such research has, for instance, been conducted by the aforementioned Hideyuki Sadakane on, among others, Yamato and Gundam: retracing SF and robot anime’s roots in popular postwar narratives on the Pacific War (notably novels and manga), he convincingly explains how they fit contemporary concerns on postwar Japanese society, articulations between the individual and the collective, and ultimately, in Gundam’s case, showcase a form of subjectivity appropriate to the contemporary mass-consumer Japanese society (a line of argument amply discussed by other Japanese sociologists, the most famous of which would be Shinji Miyadai: which is to say, readily available to Clements). In other words, if series like Yamato or Gundam were successful, it is because, on top of the many efforts of their creators, distributors, owners, etc., they either met an audience who was ready for them or even created their own audience and its expectations. Approaching such encounters — that is, historical successes and origins of threads of influence — requires both a deep understanding of the audience and its needs (that is, society and its aspirations) and of the way works answer or overcome them (that is, form).
To be clear, I am not trying to simply replace Clements’ technological determinism with a social one; in such an analysis, social actors can and should be restored agency. This would entail, for instance, a history of taste and critical categories: evolving along with forms and exerting an influence on them, these come from people who may or may not act upon their tastes and encourage, or not, certain works over others. Put even more simply, audiences are not impersonal data that may be leveraged only for an economic understanding; they create relationships with works and forms which is not entirely subjective, and is partly what makes it possible for works and forms to have a history in the first place. Although it is in a non-historiographical context, it is to something of that order which Jacqueline Berdnt points to in her introduction to the recent Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (2024):
The form-conscious approach that prevails here is, first of all, a consequence of the central position ceded to audiences – less as social groups than as persons who perceive manga and anime and their concrete instantiations in specific settings, and who exercise agency through the choices they make according to taste, degree of exposure, and length of engagement. As distinct from older types of restrictive formalism, this Companion seeks to extend the focus on textual properties and stylistic devices to readers’, or viewers’, familiarity with recurring conventions, their orientation at sharing with others, and their affective interaction with the texts; in other words, to forms of mediation, communication, and commodification. It is in this regard that economic forces, cultural identities, and power relations are taken into account.” (p.6)
Aside from such theoretical concerns about anime and historiography, maybe it is time to conclude on the most basic (and essential) question: is Anime: A History worth reading? Aside from simple concerns of relevance and interest of the book, this also touches on its readership and place within the corpus of anime studies. Indeed, I do not think these have ever been made clear either by Clements himself or by other authors: aside from a few citations here and there, I am struck by the lack of critical discussions (either positive or negative) of Anime: A History.
Finally, to adress the question of Anime: A History’s readership and its understanding of it, Clements’ approach seems to assume that his readers are familiar with the historical narratives he criticizes. But then, I would think this would exclude the general public, as well as some sections of anime fans; this then mostly leaves us with hardcore fans and the academic audience. This book is for experts, by an expert. Rather than “a history”, Clements’ book then appears like a series of studies about key topics in anime through time, with a particular focus on historiographical questions. None of this is bad, on the contrary (I’m not one to talk!), but I raise this point because I’m not sure Anime: A History is what its title and presentation make it out to be — that is, an introductory text for those curious to learn more about anime. In other words, this is about what and who is this book for, something that’s never quite clear.
While more surface-level than methodological or factual quips, this is an important question: it touches on Clements’ place within anime criticism and reception, and the fact that there is no English-language alternative with any comparable level of rigor in the same niche (this also applies to French-language publications, by the way). Anime: A History is the by-default choice; and while it is a very valuable book, I’m not sure I’m happy with this situation. The situation of manga studies, and the aforementioned work by Exner and Horbinsky, that is the nearly simultaneous publication of two narrative and critical syntheses on manga, should show us that changes are possible (although, of course, neither book is without its faults). On the other hand, the fact remains that, for those versed into anime studies and history, Anime: A History is and should remain an essential read.
Works cited
Jacqueline Berndt (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Kaori Chiba ちばかおり, Haiji ga umareta hi – terebi anime no kinjitō wo kizuita hitobito ハイジが生まれた日――テレビアニメの金字塔を築いた人々 [The day Heidi was born: the people who built a landmark achievement of TV anime] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店, 2017).
Eike Exner, Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2025).
Ryūsuke Hikawa 氷川竜介, Nihon anime no kakushin – rekishi-shi no tenkan-ten to natta henka no kōzō bunseki 日本アニメの革新 – 歴史氏の転換点となった変化の構造分析[Innovation in Japanese animation: a structural analysis of historical turning points] (Tokyo : Kadokawa Shinsho 角川新書, 2023).
Andrea Horbinski, Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (Oakland : University of California Press, 2025).
Tomoya Kimura 木村智哉, Toei Dōga-shiron : keiei to sōzō no teiryū 東映動画史論 経営と創造の底流, [History of Toei Dōga: the undercurrents of its creation and management] (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron-sha 日本評論社, 2020).
Frederick S. Litten, Animated Film in Japan until 1919: Western Animation and the Beginnings of Anime. (2017). https://litten.de/fulltext/animebeg.pdf
Yasumasa Makimura 牧村康正 and Tetsuhisa Yamada 山田哲久, Uchū Senkan Yamato wo tsukutta otoko : Nishizaki Yoshinobu no kyōki 「宇宙戦艦ヤマト」を作った男 西崎義展の狂気 [The man who made Space Battleship Yamato: Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s madness] (Tokyo: Kodansha 講談社, 2015).
Hiromichi Masuda 増田弘道, Anime bijinesu ga wakaru アニメビジネスがわかる[Understanding anime business] (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan NTT出版, 2007).
Yusuke Nakagawa 中川右介, Anime taikoku kenkoku-ki, 1963-1973 – terebi anime wo kizuita senkusha-tachi アニメ大国 建国紀 1963-1973 テレビアニメを築いた先駆者たち [Chronicle of the foundation of the animation kingdom, 1963-1973: the pioneers who built TV anime], (Tokyo: Shueisha 集英社, 2020).
Yūichirō Oguro 小黒祐一郎, Anime mania ga kataru anime 60-nen shi 1963-2023 アニメマニアが語るアニメ60年史 1963~2023 [An anime fan talks about 60 years of anime history] (Tokyo: Style, 2024).
Eiji Otsuka 大塚英志, , Ni-kai no jūnin to sono jidai – ten kei-ki no sabukaruchā shi-shi 二階の住人とその時代 – 転形期のサブカルチャー私史 [The people from the second floor and their time: a personal history of the turning point in the history of subcultures] (Tokyo: Seikaisha Shinsho 星海社新書, 2016).
Marie Pruvost-Delaspre, Aux origines de l’animation japonaise. Le studio Toei Doga (1956-1972) [The origins of Japanese animation: Toei Doga studio (1956-1972)], (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021).
Hideyuki Sadakane 貞包英之, Sabukarucha wo shōhi suru: 20-seiki ni okeru manga, anime no rekishi shakai-gaku サブカルチャーを消費する:20世紀日本における漫画・アニメの歴史社会学 [Consuming subculture: a historical sociology of manga and anime in 20th-century Japan] (Tamagawa: Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppan-bu, 2021).
Nobuyuki Tsugata 津堅信之, Nihon anime shi 日本アニメ史 [History of Japanese Animation] (Tokyo: Koron Shinsha, 2022).
