Book review: Anime: a history by Jonathan Clements

"Anime: A History." Jonathan Clements. BFI and Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. --- Japanese animation is at the nexus of an international multimedia industry worth over $6.5 billion a year, linked to everything from manga to computer games, Pokémon and plushies. In this book, Jonathan Clements sets out to chronicle the production and reception history of anime, from a handful of hobbyists in the 1910s to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away and beyond. Casey Brienza finds this book to be a magisterial effort that will prove invaluable for scholars, particularly in the social sciences, who are interested in the political economy of anime production.