The Anime Encyclopedia - A to Z

The new edition of The Anime Encyclopedia. Huge.

The Anime Encyclopedia, 3rd Revised Edition: A Century of Japanese Animation by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy. This third edition of the landmark reference work has six additional years of information on Japanese animation, its practitioners and products, plus incisive thematic entries on anime history and culture. With credits, links, cross-references, and content advisories for parents and libraries.

Attack on Titan: Attack on Titan follows the progress of a series of raw recruits, through early trauma, boot camp, and combat a la Starship Troopers, as they prepare to avenge the deaths of their loved ones in the fall of the outermost of several concentric walls. With its depiction of a world under siege, Attack on Titan seems to have tapped into the zeitgeist of the 21st century, attracting fans at both ends of the political spectrum, and plaudits and controversy in equal measure.

Baccano!: Two hundred years after a group of alchemists summon a demon that can confer the elixir of immortality, the surviving sorcerers and their associates reconvene in a very different world. Against all odds, Baccano makes a virtue of its complexity and wildly varying tone, which swings between comedy and gory violence, somehow negotiating entertainment thrills out of a mess that could all too easily have had the opposite effect.

Cowboy Bebop: Spike Spiegel and ex-cop Jet Black are bounty hunters who range across the whole solar system. Teaming up, albeit reluctantly, with mystery woman Faye Valentine, hacker brat Ed (who's a girl), and a super-intelligent Welsh corgi called Ein, they remain perpetually on the lookout for criminals on the run. From such a simple premise springs one of the most entertaining anime shows of the 1990s.

Death Note: Light is a handsome, intelligent high school boy from a good family, an ace student who detests evil. He finds a notebook with five specific instructions written inside; follow these instructions exactly, says the Death Note, and any person you choose will die. In design and animation terms, Death Note is conventional, but cleanly and elegantly done. Despite being run in a graveyard slot where nobody was supposedly watching, it migrated into other territories with a viral…

Eden of the East: Suppose they dropped a bomb and nobody died? [Saki] runs into a spot of trouble in front of the White House and is saved by a fellow Japanese. All [Akira] has on him--literally--is a handgun and a mobile phone charged with a ludicrous amount of digital cash. Kamiyama's trademark frame composition is so precisely crafted that it frequently attains the level of both poetry and engineering, every shot carefully selected, every expression magnificently effective.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Alphonse's body is destroyed, but Edward manages to save his soul by transferring it into a suit of armor--although it literally costs him an arm and a leg. Uniting the quest narrative of Dororo with the militarized European sorcery of Howl's Moving Castle, FMA rode the wave of Harry Potter's success to become one of the fan-favorite anime of the early 21st century.

Gintama: Silver-haired samurai Gintoki, swordsman Shinpachi, and alien girl Kagura team up to form an agency, Yorozuya, or "We do everything"--offering to take any job if the price is right. Unfortunately, things rarely go according to plan….frequently breaking the fourth wall, the manga and anime steal many targets and themes from contemporary Japanese society, parodying the round of festivals and rituals that have endured since the Edo period and referring to historical figures.

Hunter x Hunter: Twelve-year-old orphan Gon lives on Whale Island with his Aunt Mito. A chance forest meeting with Kyte the Hunter reveals that his father is actually still alive and is known throughout the world as the greatest hunter who ever lived. Gon decides to be just like his dad (the all-purpose job description encompassing monster-killing, bounty-taking, treasure-troving, and tomb-raiding), setting off to take the tests of manhood.

Inu Yasha: Japanese schoolgirl Kagome is pulled into a well by a centipede monster and through a 500-year time tunnel to Japan's civil-war era. She escapes from the well to discover Inu Yasha, a half-dog demon, pinned to a nearby tree by the priestess Kikyo. A buddy-story in the tradition of Ushio and Tora, with a time-traveling element that bears a close relationship to the creator's earlier Fire Tripper.

Jormungand: Teenage arms dealer Koko Hekmatyar travels the world selling weapons in her work as an unofficial subcontractor for international shipping company HCLI. If you're after a show that gives you gallons of blood and flocks of flying artillery, thick and fast enough to level buildings, without a single preachy precept to leaven its amoral revelry in death, but with real character development and plotting strung so tight you could play a guitar on it, this is your show.

Kill la Kill: Ryuko Matoi comes to Honnoji Academy in search of the woman who killed her father, imparting a degree of samurai vendetta to this over-the-top school-fighting drama. Although on the surface it seems assembled from a standard bucket of familiar anime cliches, it's made with real heart, and a love of those same traditions.

Lupin III: Lupin is a Japanese criminal with a heart of gold, grandson of the infamous French burglar Arsene Lupin. His gang includes Lee Marvin-look-alike Daisuke Jigen, a sharpshooter with a 0.3-second quick draw, and Goemon Ishikawa XIII, descendant of the samurai thief first immortalized in the puppet play Ishikawa Goemon. Longer running than Gundam and with a pedigree beaten by few anime, Lupin III began as a 1967 Manga Action publication by Monkey Punch.

My Neighbor Totoro: Father takes the bus to the university where he lectures, Satsuki attends the local school, and Mei gets lost in the undergrowth, where she discovers a family of round, fluffy woodland creatures. Mispronouncing "troll," from Three Billy-Goats Gruff, she calls them Totoros. My Neighbor Totoro sees everything through the unquestioning, uncritical, undaunted eyes of a child, and it is an uplifting film of of unadulterated hope.

Naruto: The people of [Naruto's] home village of Konoha fear and distrust what is inside the boy, and as a result of this distrust--and of being orphaned--he's hot-headed and a bit of a troublemaker; but Naruto is determined to show them he is a human being who can be loved and trusted, not a demon. Far from showing the usual pattern of declining viewership as the years go by, Naruto continues to remain buoyant, with Road to Ninja being the highest grossing film in the franchise so far.