This book was paired with “Gekijou Anime 70 Nenshi” (70 Years of Feature Film Anime), and covers ten years beyond the standard reference “Nihon Animation Eigashi (The History of Japanese Animation Film)" (1977). It is formatted like a dictionary of works, which makes it useful even today. In contrast, the recent edition of “Nihon TV Animation Taizen (Compete Japanese TV Animation)" (2014) is difficult to use.
The title states that this list is for “anime writers,” but my main objective is to present 11 books that will give you a quick grasp of production techniques and the history of so-called commercial anime (i.e. anime that gets major distribution via TV and movie theaters). I picked these publications as an introduction to the basics, and there are also many must-read pieces about specific titles that you can find in magazines and mook publications.
The fact that I’m compiling this list means that this list will have nothing to do with “academism.” That is to say, I picked books to understand “anime history” and not the history of animation, and I focused on commercial books that probably haven’t gotten much attention in academic circles. However, I excluded my own books, and I also deliberately left off some standard references. The list is in chronological order based on publication date.
One of two must-read books for getting a handle on the history of Japanese anime.