500 Essential Anime Movies: The Ultimate Guide

on time and what I wanted!

In this comprehensive book we have a pick of 500 anime movies, plus TV series, all alphabetically and by genre such as science fiction and mecha. There was a lot of films I had never heard of that were only released in Japan, or the USA, and I like the authors rating system of giving them 1 to 5 stars out of five. Overall and excellent reference book that will appeal to all anime fans.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone into anime or animation that wants to try a film they may not have heard of before. It is a large chunky book that is a bargain for how much info it has inside.Each film is separated by genre and McCarthy gives more in depth run downs to her choice of the top anime of each section, whereas most have only a basic review and a star rating. If you want a more in depth analysis of anime this book won't do, but it serves its purpose as a book to flick through to give you ideas of what to watch next.This book also only lists older anime, nothing really after 2004. Some anime are also omitted in favour of some more...questionable choices (Jungle De Ikou anyone?) I did however like the book for including most of the Lupin the Third movies and TV specials because, boy, that franchise deserves much more love than it gets. The pictures used in the book can be hit and miss. Sometimes they are blurry or the wrong picture is used entirely, but since some of the anime shown here is so niche, perhaps McCarthy simply couldn't find better quality pictures.The version I bought also has Steamboy on the front, not the guy in black on the photo here, so I'm not sure if my copy is an older or newer edition.

A really impressive piece of work.Delighted with it on 2 counts.Firstly it had all of my favourites listed pretty much where I'd hoped they'd fall in the grand scheme of things which,secondly, meant I could rely on it's recommendations for further viewing and as a result have vastly increased my Anime collection.If you only buy one book, make this the one.

This is a nicely organized and finely printed volume, but the author's choice of what is essential is often mystifying. Her ratings make things even more mystifying in light of what she leaves out. Why include lower-star rated titles when clearly good titles are omitted? For instance, a big omission is the two-part Rurouni Kenshin OVA "Trust" and "Betrayal." I would think that anyone who has a decent amount of anime under their belt would agree: those are essential viewing--and do not necessarily require watching the TV series or reading the manga to understand. But the author opted to omit them, presumably in favor of some anime she regards as not so great. ("A Wind Named Amnesia" is another glaring omission--it may not be great; but it's way more essential than some of the other titles included. The omission of "Twelve Kingdoms" is among the other absurdities.) Then there are the several titles that clearly belong in no book of recommendations, such as "Ninja Resurrection" (which doesn't even have a real conclusion).To some point, yes, this is a matter of taste. But any author undertaking such a book has to step back a little from personal taste and idiosyncrasy and use a finer critical eye. Also, applying a little practical thought to the choices/ratings would, in some cases, have been more useful. What good is featuring as "best" something like "Samurai X: Reflection (Director's Cut)" when it's very likely to be a frustrating watch for someone who hasn't seen the whole Rurouni Kenshin series and read the manga?Also, her ratings in some cases seem less well-considered or classy than an intentional attempt to buck the norm. Rating "Spirited Away" lower than "Pom Poko"? Giving "FLCL," "Jin Roh," and "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" the same rating as "Ninja Resurrection" and "X: The Movie" and a lower rating than "Origin" and the RahXephon movie? Did the author even watch this stuff? The five-star rating of "Reflection" also fits this bill as do many of her other ratings. All of this flaming weirdness does a disservice to readers. (For me, it means I can't trust the author's judgment on titles I haven't seen, and so her ratings become merely an irritating distraction.)If you're already an anime fan, what the book is good for is its listings of older titles that have fallen off the general radar screen. If you're new to anime, it's okay as a basic volume to give you some titles to check out elsewhere to determine viewing worthiness. I would say that's about it.I bought the book inexpensively from a marketplace seller, and my advice to anyone interested is do the same rather than shell out big bucks. And as Bruce Carlson (another reviewer) mentioned, you're apt to get better info/details onine. Anime sites like Anime News Network are very helpful (check out ANN's top 10 lists, which offer active stats based on the ongoing opinions of fans and which can be expanded to include many more titles); also, amazon's listmania can be surprisingly useful, especially if you're starting out as an anime watcher. Anime fans can have their own idiocyncrasies; but I've found over time that, when opinions are averaged out, they're really the ones who know what's up.