AW: end of anime as we know it?

[Aaron Gerow]

Roger,

>I would be interested which other books, texts you use as reference for your
>manga teachings? I suppose the two Schodt books, but what else? Thanks for
>any other suggestions.

I hope I don't offend anyone out there, but I still think there is little 
out there that is very good on manga.  In class, I basically just work on 
analyzing primary texts and add my own relevant interpretations.

By far, the best books on manga in Japanese are by Natsume Fusanosuke and 
Yomota Inuhiko, both scholars who don't simply see manga as a reflection 
of society or culture, but who carefully analyze the texts themselves.  
Other Japanese scholars I respect include Otsuka Eiji, Fujimoto Yukari, 
and Kure Tomofusa.  Shimizu Isao is, of course, the main historian of 
manga, but he is mostly concerned the with pre-Tezuka era.  "How-to" 
books by Tezuka and Ishinomori can also be interesting.

In English, Schodt's books are clearly invaluable, but I still think his 
cultural and textual analyses are weak.  Sharon Kinsella's book on Adult 
Manga is out, but I've had problems with her work before: simplistic 
theorizing and inaccuracies.  She also is not good at visual analysis.  
Scott Thorn, who has a home page on shojo manga, has been working hard on 
doing anthopological analyses of shojo manga readers, but in principle he 
does not concern himself with textual analysis.  

For general world histories, I occasionally use Will Eisner's Comics and 
Sequential Art (the precursor to McCloud's book), and histories by Robert 
Harvey and Roger Savin.

I'd like to hear if others have different favorite reference texts.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171