The biggest domestic movie hit of all in Japan was the 1997 "Princess Mononoke," an animated film created by Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli. It was the most successful of a group of highly successful "anime," among them "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Porco Rosso," works that had defined the genre. All the films made a lot of money, some of it abroad, and attracted an amount of attention, some of it scholarly.
Many critical works have appeared on Japanese animated films. Among the sources in English are books and essays by Frederick Schodt, Mark Schilling, Gilles Poitras, Trish Ledoux, Susan Napier and Helen McCarthy.
McCarthy, author of the book under review, has already written three works devoted to anime and in this one has created a very handsome tribute to Miyazaki and his work.