Forum - View topicAnime Encyclopedia
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Maybe this deserves it's own thread. Personally I have been less than pleased with the Encyclopedia from the beginning. For sure, it is an extremely valuable reference, one that I have benefitted from many times. Helen and Jonathan clearly put a huge amount of work and research into creating it, they were very thourough and deserve major credit for whatthey did. But I too find fault in calling it an encyclopedia. It's really a compendium of short reviews. Where an encyclopedia should contain data, explanations, definitions and so-on, the "Anime Encyclopedia" contains opinions. To be certain it also contains a lot of data (but no definitions or explanations), but you should never call a subjective piece of work an Encyclopedia. Many people have also complained about missing titles, and you yourself have found a missing item during the short time you had it before you wrote the review. Personally I have, over the months that I've had my copy, found well over a dozen missing titles, and these were titles I was looking up because I needed information on them. But to be fair, all of the titles I was looking up were obscure titles that very few other people would look for, and most of these titles were also missing from the Protoculture Anime Guide. My last complaint was the lack of a chronological index. In short, the Anime Encyclopedia dissapointed me, it was less than I had hoped for, but, it was definitely worth my money. Knowing what I know about the Encyclopedia I woudl still willingly pay $25 for it. Maybe I should edit this, tidy it up, and write it up into an article, what do you guys think? |
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Gai Super Napalm
 Posts: 148 Location: Hoboken, NJ |
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I think the whole argument relies too much on semantics; "encyclopedia"; and perhaps overlooks the intents of the authors.. as in, maybe they just called it the anime encyclopedia because it seems a book with that name would have vast anime information; even if its not totally encyclopedia-like. Its also pretty catchy and a title like that screams "definitive"; so even if it isn't (which by what you've wrote, I don't think you are claiming.. Both you and cookie said it was pretty complete, just not detailed enough).. people would still buy it because the encyclopedia of anime has a name that would imply its some sort of authority on the subject; much like the URL www.anime.com would attract random people who don't know about anime, that would just type the URL randomly. <- That was pretty longwinded compared to what I origionally had planned.
However; a review on the anime encyclopedia, explaining some of its shortcomings and some of its achievements would probably be very useful to lots of people. But focusing on it not being a true encyclopedia seems a little fickle for the focus of a whole article. Of course, its all up to you. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15611 |
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If you're going to compare the Anime Encyclopedia to a real encyclopedia, then you have to remember that information in real encyclopedias change as well. I mean the book is already a year behind as is, becuase of all the new anime tv shows and movies currently out. But if you need a starting point for anime in general, then this is it. Therefore, it does serve a functional purpose. I don't think the book was meant for someone who's seen every Miyazaki movie or tv show under the sun; and thus it wouldn't be fair for the hardcore fan to use their experience to criticize the book, when it's mostly meant for newcomers.
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