The Anime Boom in the United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries by Michal Daliot-Bul and Nissim Otmazgin (review)

I should state at the outset that this is a well-researched, sophisticated, and thought-provoking book, a valuable contribution to the increasingly significant field of cross-cultural transmission studies. Having said that, I must admit that I initially picked up the book with mixed feelings. The Anime Boom in the United States is published by Harvard University's East Asian Monograph Series. Twenty-five years or so ago, I had a contract with Harvard's East Asian Monograph Series to publish my book on anime, one of the first academic books ever written on Japanese animation. Although the outside reviews were enthusiastic, Harvard's editor warned me that the "board" was not keen on popular culture studies. Sure enough, the inside review, which my would-be editor (perhaps wisely) did not show me, apparently consisted of two paragraphs, one detailing my spelling mistakes, the other asserting that anime was not a topic worth researching.

I mention this story, not simply to share a traumatic professional anecdote, nor even because it is a revealing example of how much cultural and academic trends have changed over the last couple of decades, but also to bring up the question of how far into the mainstream anime can or will penetrate. The Anime Boom explores both these latter aspects, detailing the history of anime's successful incursion into an overwhelming U.S. popular culture universe but also discussing at some length whether this penetration can be sustained in the next decades. Ultimately, it offers suggestions as to how anime can continue to exert influence beyond its domestic borders while at the same time acknowledging that the tension between anime's cultural specificity and its complicated reception outside Japan may prevent any substantial further growth.

Certainly in Japan studies, anime and its related media of manga and video games have become a staple. Many students take Japan-related courses precisely because of their interest in these media. Although those of us in the field hope our students will come away with an appreciation of the many other facets of Japanese culture, the fact remains that the immersive world of these popular culture visual forms, with their frequently complex plots, psychological depth, and striking visual styles, is worthy of study on its own. Recent publications, such as Christopher Bolton's erudite exploration, Interpreting Anime, attest to the still-vibrant intellectual appeal of this material.

However, especially in the last decade, another trend has arisen in Western anime scholarship, away from analyzing the content of anime and more toward engaging with anime and other visual media as part of a global cultural phenomenon with deep links to contemporary capitalism. Increasingly, scholars analyze anime as a function of the globalizing culture industry, one of many new expressions of cultural mobility and consumption in an Internet-dominated world. In the United States, this scholarly trend began at least as early as 2006 with Roland Kelts's JapanAmerica which, while it dealt with some content material, also stepped back to treat the continuous and (in Kelts's eyes) reciprocal transmission of Japanese and U.S. culture as a kind of infinite cultural moebius strip. In the last decade, Ian Condry's book The Soul of Anime turned the spotlight on the internal workings of the Japanese anime industry but also included an important discussion concerning the "copyright wars" between U.S. fans and Japanese producers. Marc Steinberg's Anime's Media Mix focused on how capitalism and consumer culture encased anime in a transmedial network, seeing anime as part of a media mix heavily dependent on linking with other products and achieving economic power through judicious marketing. In The Dragon and the Dazzle, Marco Pelleteri explored anime's and manga's status as postmodern cultural products from a European perspective. Rayna Denison's Anime used genre studies...