Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation
Director Hayao Miyazaki ranks among the most interesting and original  figures currently working in world animation. His charming children's filmsMy Neighbor TotoroandKiki's Delivery Serviceenjoy a rapidly growing  audience in the U.S., and his brilliantPrincess Mononoke, which broke box-office records in Japan, was released theatrically in the U.S. in November of 1999. Although storybook adaptations and a few Japanese volumes about individual films have appeared in the U.S., a major study of his work in English is long overdue. Miyazaki's many fans will enjoy Helen McCarthy'sHiyao Miyazakiand Mark Schilling'sPrincess Mononoke: The Art and Making of Japan's Most Popular Film of All Time, but neither is fully satisfactory.McCarthy, who has written extensively aboutanime, offers an overview of the artist's career in animation andmanga. She discusses each film in detail, with character descriptions and plot synopses, but she writes as a fan (rather than a critic or historian), and her text overflows with  superlatives. Miyazaki is an exceptionally talented director, and his work merits a more discerning evaluation. McCarthy is also surprisingly careless about details: the ill-fated Japanese-American collaboration,Little Nemo, was in the works far longer than six years; and she describes the boar-god Nago inMononokeas being wounded by a "ball of stone" when it's a actually an iron bullet. The latter may seem like nitpicking, but the hero's search for the source of the iron sets the plot of the film in motion. Finally, like Schilling'sPrincess Mononoke,Hiyao Miyazakiwould have benefited from more careful proofreading; for example, McCarthy  misspells the name of animation giant Winsor McCay. The  extensive, but by no means complete, bibliography is a useful  resource.--Charles Solomon