The Introductionprovides textual and technical definitions for anime and explores anime’s relationship to nation and culture by drawing on previous studies, such as those by Ian Condry, Dani Cavallaro, Thomas LaMarre (“Animation” Anime), Susan Napier ( Princess “When” Howl’s) and Koichi Iwabuchi. To this aim, the analysis of the context in which anime develops is crucially important: “anime needs to be understood more broadly as a cultural phenomenon whose meanings are dependent on context” (2). The use of alternative primary sources and varied voices means that Denison’s study does not propose to answer the question “what is anime?” but attempts, instead, to explore the wide range of meanings associated with it. Starting with these premises, then, Anime: A Critical Introduction is not a study that simply focuses on the analysis of specific anime texts, but rather on the exploration of the primary sources cited above, with a privileged eye for places of popular debate rather than for the assertions of authoritative figures, such as anime directors, that tend to restrain debates on the meanings of anime instead of sparking further reflection. In Denison’s own words the subject of her book is “not just anime, but the ways in which anime is talked about by those enabling its creation and watching over its global dispersal-including industry professionals and academics, but also the trade presses, popular presses and fan communities supporting anime’s domestic and transnational life” (2). Rayna Denison’s comprehensive study Anime: A Critical Introduction constitutes an innovative and compelling approach to the study of anime not simply as a “genre”, but as a continuously shifting set of texts influenced by context and by the constant exchanges at work between the practices of the industry, the global communities of fans and the academic discourse around it. Anime: A Critical Introduction, by Rayna Denison.
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