The publisher's press release says, "Samurai from Outer Space is the first book-length discussion of the suddenly terrifically popular genre of Japanese animation." That is misleading. In fact, the book itself cites and highly recommends the earlier The Complete Anime Guide. But the Guide concentrates on individual anime titles, with a title-by-title history of the growth of anime in America from 1963 to the present. Where Samurai from Outer Space breaks new ground is that it is the first detailed discussion of the popular-culture sociology of anime.

Author Antonia Levy is a former resident of Japan who is a specialist in its culture, with a doctorate in Japanese history. She has taught Japanese history at American colleges, and has actively participated in their campus anime fan clubs. She is interested in anime in its own right, but is also fascinated by the reasons for its enthusiastic acceptance, despite a general American ignorance of the cultural background needed to fully understand the stories. Samurai from Outer Space is primarily an analysis of this phenomenon.

The book is skillfully written to appeal to both the anime neophyte and the knowledgeable fan. Levy's introduction notes the spreading popularity of anime. "National video franchises like Blockbuster Video devote an entire section to anime even in small rural towns, and the number of their offerings is growing fast. . . . Almost every college campus has at least a small anime club. Over four hundred of them maintain elaborate home pages on the World Wide Web." The reason, she quotes its fans, is that, "anime's charm lies in its unpredictability, its off-beat weirdness that makes you stop and think about things you never even noticed before."

The main text analyzes and explains these weirdnesses in broad categories. Chapter Two, "Disney in a Kimono," covers the differences in general movie and TV cartoon-art styling between American and Japanese animation. Why Japanese cartoon characters have such big eyes. Why they have pastel-colored hair or otherwise "don't look Japanese." The importance of the fact that Japanese animation evolved from dramatic theater and literature, rather than from the comedic as in America. "In content and style, anime also draws heavily on Japanese literary traditions. This is particularly telling in anime television series. Unlike American TV which is episodic and fairly static in terms of character development, anime created for Japanese television are serial and draw as much of their appeal from character development as from plot. . . . the serial nature of television dramas . . . allow it ample time to expand on character development. This also gives anime its distinctive moral ambiguity. Since human beings change over time, it's only natural that some villains will reform and become heroes, while some heroes will turn out to have feet of clay." In other words, one of the main facets of anime's appeal is that much of it is action-adventure soap opera. Is it really news to anyone in America that soap operas can be very popular?