书评作者Jaqueline Berndt, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 45, Number 2, Summer 2019, pp. 471-475 (Review), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2019.0063

摘取其中几段，同时也是个人阅读时的一些疑惑：

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As a whole, Interpreting Anime covers almost three decades of animated film, spanning the years from 1987 to 2015 and following, more or less, a chronology, not only with regard to the considered works (p. 261) but also the respective theories. The general orientation is a retrospective one. The book contextualizes animated movies that have achieved transcultural renown within Japan’s political history, and it provides access to critical tools to which students of the Japanese language or of Japan may not necessarily be exposed. At the same time, questions about the lasting significance of its readings arise: In which way has the triple disaster of March 2011 affected anime? To what extent have the “crises of postmodernism,” and the related theories, lost their topicality for anime creators and viewers who experience fluid, networked subjectivities not as the exception but as the rule? And how may anime provoke the rethinking of “literature,” besides the inclusion of a different medium, that is, visual narratives?

Interpreting Anime rests on a notion of literature that treats anime productions as texts, or more precisely, readerly texts, to borrow Roland Barthes’s term. Thoroughly created by author-directors as more or less bounded entities, these representations of the world by “language” reward reading, that is, the interpretive unpacking of political messages and truly critical meanings which aesthetic forms metaphorically relate. The agent of such reading is not necessarily the intellectual literary critic but is still a modern individual positioned in and vis-à-vis society at large, beyond sociocultural communities, gendered fandoms, and generational cohorts. The book’s frequent use of the inclusive pronoun “we” is indicative in this regard. While holding the potential to promote anime to the general public, it distracts from the actual situatedness of experiencing anime (including not only distributional platforms, but also conventionalized textual forms and established practices of use). Interpreting Anime conjoins a universalized “reader” with a generalized notion of anime that is modeled on one variant of the broader anime spectrum. This generalization applies also to manga, live-action film, and the novel, to which the animated films under discussion are compared, and it can be traced back to an understanding of medium specificity that abstracts from institutional frameworks and paratextual communication. From an anime studies perspective, one may wonder what kind of anime is being interpreted, under what conditions, and by whom, in relation to society at large or matters of geopolitical scope. One may further wonder what anime productions offer beyond deep, verbalizable meanings or, to rephrase, why people continue watching series that do not provide critical messages. In addition, one may find aesthetic innovation and critical self-awareness not in opposition to conventions and formulaic qualities but in relation to them, and one may complicate the “Japan” layer of anime production and consumption.

Bolton’s book offers many insightful observations about the animated movies it discusses and the related critique, but in the main it commits less to anime, or animation, studies than to an interpretation of contemporary culture using the example of Japan. Because of its rigor which allows for discussion and supplementation, it will prove highly stimulating in Japan studies courses on popular culture and anime.