Helen McCarthy, former editor of Anime UK and author of Anime! A Beginner's Guide to Japanese Animation (Titan Books, London, 1993), is England's preeminent proponent of Japanese animation. Her most recent book The Anime! Movie Guide serves as a useful companion volume to last year's The Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Film Directory and Resource Guide (reviewed in AWM, July 1997) co-authored by Trish Ledoux, editor of the magazine, Animerica and an equally tireless advocate of anime in the U.S.

McCarthy's book includes information, primarily plot synopses, on dozens of titles not yet officially released in the west, including, where possible, always hard-to-find credit information. As such the book gives the diligent reader a more accurate picture of the scope of Japanese animation than do most English-language sources. McCarthy includes numerous soap operas, teen romances and sports dramas (tennis, softball, soccer) that are unlikely to surface in the west. However, the book's structure is particularly unwieldy for newcomers to anime.

An Awkward Structure
Unlike Ledoux's book, which compiled entries alphabetically for all anime titles released in the U.S., McCarthy's book adopts a chronological structure divided into chapters devoted to each year from 1983 to 1995 inclusive, with each chapter split into alphabetical listings of theatrical and original animation video (OAV) releases. Such a structure requires readers to look up titles they're seeking in a (small-print) index. To locate all the titles in a particular long-running series (e.g. Dirty Pair or Ranma 1/2) one must make frequent trips to the index. People looking for a particular genre or style of anime will have no choice but to read everything. There is no genre index and the genre abbreviations used in the individual entries are confusing.

I normally favor a chronological approach but only when the goal is a broad historical overview to chart changes, improvements, and growth in the field. The encyclopedic approach makes it hard to detect patterns over the years. Ledoux's book at least makes it easy to find individual titles and conveniently places all entries in a particular series in one place. By starting in 1983, the first year of OAV releases, McCarthy leaves out several key animated features from the 1970s and early `80s, including the first four Space Cruiser Yamato features, Galaxy Express 999, Adieu Galaxy Express 999, Phoenix 2772, Toward the Terra, Arcadia of My Youth, Castle Cagliostro, Cyborg 009, the Mobile Suit Gundam features and the first Japanese animated feature released in the U.S., Alakazam the Great. Also, by leaving out television series (more and more of which are being released on video in the U.S.), we don't get entries for the television versions of Ranma 1/2, Mobile Suit Gundam, Patlabor, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Captain Harlock, Dancougar, and the three series that made up the American series, Robotech.

Reviewing the Reviews
While Ledoux had a staff of 15 contributors assisting in the reviews, McCarthy has taken on the Herculean task of reviewing nearly a thousand titles all by her lonesome. Predictably, the quality of the reviews varies wildly. The majority of her entries are primarily synopses. While synopses are helpful, and at times necessary, they need to be accompanied by critique. Unfortunately, McCarthy has the fan writer's crippling predilection for emphasizing plot over stylistic description. I generally want to know what a film looks like, what it's similar to, and what its stylistic trademarks are; only occasionally does McCarthy convey this.