harvey @ deneroff.com

I just received a copy of Tze-Yue G. (“Gigi”) Hu’s long-awaited Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building recently published by Hong Kong University Press, and distributed in North America by University of Washington Press ($28.00 paperback and $55.00 hardcover). Gigi, who teaches Asian Studies at the University of Oklahoma’s School of International and Area Studies, is someone I’ve known and liked for many years. Thus, when she asked me to write a blurb for her book, I was quite happy to do so. My blurb, which accurately sums up my opinion, was that:

Frames of Anime provides a wonderfully concise and insightful historical overview of Japanese animation; more importantly, Tze-yue G. Hu also gives the reader a much-needed frame of reference — cultural and historical — for understanding its development.