Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Anime Encyclopedia: A Century of Japanese Animation” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Anime Encyclopedia: A Century of Japanese Animation

Jonathan Clements,

Helen McCarthy

4.04 · Rating details · 233 ratings · 21 reviews

"Impressive, exhaustive, labyrinthine, and obsessive—The Anime Encyclopedia is an astonishing piece of work."—Neil Gaiman

Over one thousand new entries . . . over four thousand updates . . . over one million words. . .

This third edition of the landmark reference work has six additional years of information on Japanese animation, its practitioners and products, plus incisive ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 3rd Revised Edition, 1160 pages

Published March 3rd 2015 by Stone Bridge Press (first published September 1st 2001)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Anime Encyclopedia, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Anime Encyclopedia

Lists with This Book

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck

Animation History Books

182 books — 16 voters

The Japanophile's Handbook by Alexei Maxim Russell

Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle by Susan J. Napier

Japanese Pop Culture.

116 books — 15 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.04 ·

Rating details

· 233 ratings · 21 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Anime Encyclopedia: A Century of Japanese Animation

Feb 14, 2017 mark monday rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: guidebooks, living-document

Anime is one of my favorite things so I've been considering off and on whether to buy the hardcover or kindle version of this book. My main experience is with anime films; tv anime is a more recent love, thanks to services like Hulu and Crunchyroll (and of course torrents, but shhh), so I've wanted to arm myself with a good reference tool. I'm glad I didn't choose the actual book and its high price tag because this has been a bit of a disappointment so far. I've read better reviews on websites l ...more

flag 80 likes · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2017 Sophie Crane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: film-tv, encyclopedias-dictionarys

I have been a fan of anime since 1999 now so I have had some time to familiarise myself with quite a few titles, from fairly well known ones like Ghibli's to lesser knowns I've stumbled across from friends or random showings at conventions. This book's listed all the one's I can think of, and plenty more besides. Not all get pages and pages of text, but hey, you can't expect the authors to have watched and deeply analysed EVERYTHING, and there's a lot of interesting and enlightening stuff here.
T I have been a fan of anime since 1999 now so I have had some time to familiarise myself with quite a few titles, from fairly well known ones like Ghibli's to lesser knowns I've stumbled across from friends or random showings at conventions. This book's listed all the one's I can think of, and plenty more besides. Not all get pages and pages of text, but hey, you can't expect the authors to have watched and deeply analysed EVERYTHING, and there's a lot of interesting and enlightening stuff here.
There's a slight review in many of the descriptions, usually enough to serve as a warning or reccomendation. Personally I'm really enjoying the commentary, I think it's quite funny in parts... but then if you've watched much anime you'll know it can be quite hard to do a significant number of descriptions seriously, and when you include more adult anime - well, it was surreal enough already.
There's also some commentry on themes of anime and other stuff, which is probably really interesting and useful for people properly interested, but I've spent most of my time looking up anime I've watched so far. I did read a bit about ratings of anime (as in people tuned in, or however it's measured these days). That was very illuminating, I'd always assumed anime must be highly rated in Japan, and also I completely bought that GTO (live action) was the highest rated series in Japan. Surprise!
But really, this is a very good book, and VERY UP TO DATE considering others I've read. It's up to sometime in 2006: 1917 to 2006 doesn't seem a bad span to me!
I can imagine a book like this might confuse a newcomer to anime, given the amount of content. But also, each description will ususally contain a mention of an anime of similar plot or style, giving thozse exploring the genre a bit of a tour, without having to ask the advice of someone else who m,ight have COMPLETELY different tastes?
Anyway, like I've said, I've only had this book a day, so maybe I'm speaking to soon. All I know is that having had it this long has given me more motivation to write a review than I think I've had in a long time. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Oct 08, 2015 Lucian Bordei rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: bad

Jonah's review already summarized one of the main failures of this book; the writers are shamefully ignorant pseudo-intellectuals trying to review anime from the perspective of ~animation experts~ despite lacking the most basic knowledge of it. Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements are, putting it simply, emperors with no clothing; they made their way into "anime academia" by simply having the right connections, but their critical input is ultimately less valuable or honest than even that of the Jonah's review already summarized one of the main failures of this book; the writers are shamefully ignorant pseudo-intellectuals trying to review anime from the perspective of ~animation experts~ despite lacking the most basic knowledge of it. Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements are, putting it simply, emperors with no clothing; they made their way into "anime academia" by simply having the right connections, but their critical input is ultimately less valuable or honest than even that of the typical IMDB or MyAnimeList review. About as insightful as the average 4chan "shitsux" troll post, the difference between 4chan's /a/ and The Anime Encyclopedia being that, if you trudge through the garbage, you may find nuggets of gold in the former.

The 4chan troll comparison can be taken really far, to the point where Clements and McCarthy deem works they have never fully experienced to be garbage; they dismiss the hugely revolutionary Devilman as poor despite getting the most basic plot information wrong, stating that Ryo is "the son of Satan" and mistaking Amon's appearance in his titular OVA for Satan himself. They unironically claim that Go Nagai's manga Abashiri Family "recalls" an OVA that came out much later. They "inform" you that Violence Jack started in Weekly Manga Goraku, despite first running in a completely different, shonen magazine and turning seinen (along with sometimes getting pointlessly guro-like to take needless advantage of the new, "edgier" publication & older target audience, something they mistakenly associate with the entire franchise) in the 80s run. They quickly move past the amazing, satirically biting and shockingly enough in its later parts *strikingly emotional* Shin Chan: The Adult Empire Strikes Back film while getting the story synopsis completely wrong.

Helen McCarthy lacks even the most basic observational skill required to be an even vaguely satisfactory reviewer of a visual medium; in a podcast, she once claimed that Howl's Moving Castle was animated on traditional cels and that Shinya Ohira's stylistic animation for it was simply "paint spilling over".

There is no reason to financially support this book in an age where countless encyclopedic websites exist. It's filled to the brim with misinformation and half-truths, it's pointless, and above all else it's oddly mean-spirited and holier-than-thou for something so blatantly ignorant. McCarthy and Clements are the stereotypical pseudo-intellectual "scholars" of those often-misunderstood mediums commonly considered "nerdy" in our society; the Japanese cartoon equivalents of the pathetic video game reviewer attempting to explain to you how Bioshock Infinite is "the Citizen Kane of gaming" because it tackles racism in a childish one-dimensional manner while using a slew of "big words" he/she doesn't actually understand, but sound "literary" enough to make them sound smart to the easily manipulated. The failed English major who, at some point in time, genuinely cared for the nerdy medium he/she is currently covering, but has long since stopped giving a damn, yet is nonetheless forced to focus on the only thing they can fool themselves and others into thinking they are knowledgeable about in order to put some food on the table. They spread the copy+pasted, misinformed, uninterested opinions of their shameless has-been peers while keeping animation commentary an impenetrable, cronyism-filled clique.

Long story short: if you're curious how bad it is and whether my claims of inaccuracies and poor reviews pretending to be encyclopedic entries are correct, simply read the legal online preview. Read the words of actual animation fans with actual animation knowledge and, above all else, true respect for the medium. Not the half-hearted recommendations of the "anime critic" peers of this books' writers, who are financially obligated to praise low-quality writing in order to defend their own careers. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Oct 28, 2010 #ReadAllTheBooks rated it liked it · review of another edition

While I love my encylopedia to tatters, I will give the average reader some warnings about this book & a bit of history. In the past this encyclopedia was a bit lambasted for having a ratings scale, which not all fans agreed upon. (Because hey... just because I think that one anime is terrible doesn't mean that it actually is.) Then there were "weasel words" tucked into other reviews, which was far from being as unbiased as an encyclopedia should be. (I have to admit, I didn't see them until som ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 20, 2010 Indah Threez Lestari rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-english, nonfiction, movie-tv-tie-in

Ensiklopedi ini sangat cocok jadi primbon para anime-otaku, meskipun data terbaru hanya sampai tahun 2005 (tentu saja, kalau mau update terus setiap saat mendingan langganan majalah Newtype atau majalah lokal Animonster sekalian). Buat mereka yang awam anime, buku ini bisa menambah wawasan dan pengetahuan agar tidak menganggap animasi hanya tontonan bagi anak-anak.

Industri anime sudah menjadi industri raksasa di Jepang, hingga pangsa pasarnya bukan hanya anak-anak dan remaja, tapi juga dewasa. Ensiklopedi ini sangat cocok jadi primbon para anime-otaku, meskipun data terbaru hanya sampai tahun 2005 (tentu saja, kalau mau update terus setiap saat mendingan langganan majalah Newtype atau majalah lokal Animonster sekalian). Buat mereka yang awam anime, buku ini bisa menambah wawasan dan pengetahuan agar tidak menganggap animasi hanya tontonan bagi anak-anak.

Industri anime sudah menjadi industri raksasa di Jepang, hingga pangsa pasarnya bukan hanya anak-anak dan remaja, tapi juga dewasa. Bahkan sampai ada anime porno (baca: Hentai) segala, yang baru baca sinopsisnya di ensiklopedi ini saja para feminist bisa murka, saking jalan ceritanya selalu 100% merendahkan kaum wanita.

Membaca setiap entry-nya dari A sampai Z, kita juga bisa mengetahui bahwa ternyata budaya animasi Jepang dan AS masih sangat berbeda, di mana seperti di Indonesia, di AS animasi masih dianggap tontonan khusus anak-anak. Anime yang lolos standar tontonan anak-anak dan remaja di Jepang seperti Detektif Conan, One Piece dan Naruto misalnya, di AS harus disensor ketat karena banyaknya adegan kekerasan dan berdarah-darah (sudah pasti, karena Detektif Conan kan rata-rata investigasi pembunuhan, jadi banyak mayat berdarah-darah, dan One Piece/Naruto kan pertarungan antar bajak laut/ninja, tentu full kekerasan dan banyak yang mati juga). Mungkin di Indonesia sensornya tidak seketat AS, tapi ada saja yang mengecam tayangan One Piece dan Naruto, yang dianggap membawa pengaruh buruk buat anak-anak (yang masih belum bisa membedakan fiksi dan kenyataan, barangkali). Sementara tayangan anime yang di Jepang ditujukan buat kalangan dewasa macam Crayon Shinchan malah tidak dikritik, padahal bisa saja anak-anak Indonesia meniru kenakalan dan pervert,-nya... XD

Anyway, ensiklopedi ini mengingatkanku pada masa aku masih tergila-gila pada anime, rajin mengumpulkan dan menonton fansubnya. Fullmetal Alchemist, Gungrave, Hellsing, Srcyed, Gundam, Trigun, Bleach, Naruto, and many many more... Hanya karena faktor waktu yang terbatas sekarang aku cuma mengumpulkan manga saja (tapi tetap update berita anime dari majalah sih). Jadi kepingin nonton ulang semuanya ...

*just wishful thinking...* ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 08, 2011 Jonah rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned-books

From the wikipedia entry on the encyclopedia: Generally speaking, unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information to cover the thing or concept for which the article name stands.

Indeed, factual information is what I was expecting, and it was the reason I purchased this tome, sight-unseen, from amazon some time ago. What I found instead are biased, snide capsule reviews.

I understand how touchy fans get about things l ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 23, 2013 L rated it liked it · review of another edition

Clements is not shy about sharing his opinions of the entries.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Sep 25, 2018 Francine rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-used-to-own, unfinished, 2018, pre-2013

I read the 2006 edition, so as happens with any encyclopedia, it became outdated. I guess for what it is, it's pretty good, but also a little lackluster: I would have preferred more colour and/or more pictures. It could've been a great coffee table book if they had had a bigger budget. ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 24, 2019 Ronald McCoy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: anime

Classic work! A bit addictive as it has a lot fo great suggestions for new topics

flag Like · see review

Oct 20, 2017 Ilib4kids rated it liked it

Shelves: w_nf_bklist_ref, w_nf_all

791.4334 CLE 2015

This is 3rd Revised Edition on 2015, it is for anime, not for manga books. I did not finished it, just look at some recent anime I watched, like Paprika (2006 film), Code Geass, Nabari. See evernote.

flag Like · see review

Jun 27, 2013 Ashley added it · review of another edition

Shelves: reference-section

Clements, J., & McCarthy, H. (2001, September 1). The anime encyclopedia: A guide to japanese animation since 1917. New York, NY: Stone Bridge Press.

Citation by: Ashley D. Brown
Type of Reference: Encyclopedia
Call Number: NC1766 .J3 C53 2001

Brief description:
An expansive encyclopedia of more than 2000 anime films and TV series. Each entry includes a short synopsis of the anime feature, commentary, details about the creative staff, and comments on the work’s significance to anime history. A biblio ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 30, 2015 Shadowjac rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a very useful book if you want to know the Japanese and English name of every anime ever. This book is also useful for knowing how long a series is and how many OVAs a series has. The only problem with this book I have is the author hating on classic series like Cutie Honey, or very important anime achievements such as Shojo Tsubaki.

flag Like · see review

Jun 23, 2014 Joel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: film, reference, non-fiction, anime

A wide range of information on, quite literally, EVERY anime up until 2006. Feature Lengths, series, OVA's, specials, shorts ect... even the ones you don't really want to know about. My only qualm is that it's now quite a few years out of date. It's taken a while, but I think another revised edition was released just this year. ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 11, 2014 Asher Riley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An extremely informative, highly enjoyable read. If you are a die hard Anime fan, than this is the must own book of your life. Filled with a lifetime's worth of information and stocked chock full of 1000's of fun to read entries on Anime films, directors, studios and important events and happenings in Anime's past and present. Overall, I highly recommend this book. ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 11, 2011 Ian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I've naturally not read it from cover to cover, it's an encyclopaedia. However, the use I've had from it, in my eyes, counts as read.

It's a great read and very informative; however, it's not a cover to cover book. Reference only. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 14, 2012 Eric Orchard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Fascinating to flip through the synopsis of many anime I've never even heard of. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 09, 2012 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides marked it as reference · review of another edition

Shelves: east-asia, gift-book

Date of first consultation approximate. I received this as a gift at one point.

flag Like · see review

Feb 07, 2011 Brendan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Lots of stuff I didn't know about ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 30, 2010 Harris marked it as to-read · review of another edition

800 halaman!!!!!!!!

flag Like · see review

Jun 02, 2012 Lauren rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: manga, favorites, historical, 2006-read-books, nonfiction

I should get a more updated version, but I enjoy this.

flag Like · see review

Zlatan rated it it was amazing
Jul 12, 2014

Apr 12, 2017 Skrivena stranica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, non-fiction

Odlična pomoć ako se bavite ovom temom.

flag Like · see review

Christopher rated it really liked it
Jan 29, 2013

Lostchick rated it really liked it
Nov 05, 2018

Lou rated it liked it
Jun 23, 2012

Dan rated it liked it
Sep 27, 2020

Ginger Oni rated it it was amazing
May 13, 2014

Angela Mathews rated it really liked it
Jun 16, 2011

Stone Bridge Press rated it it was amazing
Apr 20, 2015

Alex rated it liked it
Oct 04, 2014

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Josei and Seinen ...: new anime reference	17	13	08. August, 21:20 Uhr

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Nonfiction

24 users

Reference

23 users

Media Tie In > Anime

13 users

Sequential Art > Manga

10 users

Cultural > Japan

8 users

Art

4 users

Media Tie In > Tv

3 users

History

2 users

Unfinished

2 users

Asian Literature > Japanese Literature

2 users

See top shelves…

About Jonathan Clements

Jonathan Clements

65 followers

Jonathan Clements is an author, translator, biographer and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Marco Polo, Mao Zedong, Koxinga and Qin Shihuangdi. He also writes for NEO magazine and is the co-author of encyclopedias of anime and Japanese television dramas.