Giant robots. Cat girls. Teenagers from outer space. Sexually charged (and sometimes naked) warrior women vying with over-the-top villains for control of the planet. Not the usual Disney or Hanna-Barbera fare found on Saturday morning TV. But for a niche of fans, these odd characters were the future of animation, even if they all spoke Japanese and called this peculiar style of animation "anime".It's hard to imagine today a world in which instant communication and instant downloads...

The first book-length collection by the most respected writer on anime and manga today.Anime’s influence can be found in every corner of American media, from film and television to games and graphic arts. And Fred Patten is largely responsible. He was reading manga and watching anime before most of the current generation of fans was born. In fact, it was his active participation in fan clubs and his prolific magazine writing that helped create a m...

Tales featuring anthropomorphic animals have been around as long as there have been storytellers to spin them, from Aesop's Fables to Reynard the Fox to Alice in Wonderland. The genre really took off following the explosion of furry fandom in the 21st century, with talking animals featuring in everything from science fiction to fantasy to LGBTQ coming-out stories.In his lifetime, Fred Patten (1940-2018)--one of the founders of furry fandom and a scholar o...

This book is both a celebration of the life and career of the eminent literary scholar, critic, and journalist John Sutherland and an extension of Sutherland’s work in various fields, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-American literature, the publishing industry, and its impact upon creativity and literary puzzles. With contributions from over twenty-five distinguished critics, literary journalists and scholars, this book goes beyond merely describing Sutherland’s work. The...