Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation

"This is one of the few books that touch upon Japanese animation and children's literature. It is very well-written and a ""must read"" for teachers of Japanese animation, Japanese literature, and children's literature. * Dixon Wong Heung Wah, Associate Professor of Global Creative Industries in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Hong Kong, China * Maria Chiara Oltolini explores the adaptation of western children’s literature into Japanese animation, focusing on “World Masterpiece Theater” —and dives into the pre-WW2 origins, and the subsequent Post-war occupation and boom years of anime as she shines a light into a relatively unexplored corner of the back and forth relationship between western storytelling and the Japanese anime/manga field. * Northrop Davis, Professor, University of South Carolina, USA * Building on the published works of others and citing numerous Japanese, English and other languages sources, Maria Chiara Olitini’s interdisciplinary research not only provides us the historical and literary backgrounds of the well-known World Masterpiece Theater but also gives a rich analysis of the adaptations and transformations of the original Western children literature in the animation form. Her work helps us to further understand the international success of Japanese postwar animation and in particular, the Japanese inclination towards animating children literature classics from the Western world and the subsequent cultural interpretation, reshaping and animated imagery realization of the stories. * Tze-yue G. Hu, Independent Scholar, USA, and author of Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building (2010) *"