In the opening pages of the introduction to the textbook Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, first published in 2018 and last year updated in a second edition, the book’s editors call Japanese popular culture studies “a field in formation”. Support for this assertion is easy to find. Scholarly writing on anime, manga, and other categories of Japanese popular culture continues to expand. Just recently, a major research university announced a search for an “Assistant Professor in Japanese contemporary literature and culture – with interdisciplinary research and teaching interests in manga and animé”. For the first time, the winner of the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category at the Eisner Awards is a volume on Japanese comics! And even a quick search of college course lists will demonstrate that Asian/East Asian Studies departments now commonly offer classes on Japanese popular culture!
And now, we can now add another major development to all of these, with the announcement by Cambridge University Press of plans to publish, later this year, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime. Edited by the leading manga scholar Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University), and bringing together the work of almost 20 authors, this Companion intends to position itself as a “dialogue on the study of manga and anime” that can serve to specifically introduce questions for further discussion and topics for further research.
For that matter, this kind of book can be many things. Previous publications, especially Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime (2008) and Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World (2011) were largely just collections of individual essays, without much of an overarching theme. The emphasis, if there was any, was on the unique features of particular manga and anime. The organizing principle here, on the other hand, is the idea of “forms” – not just anime and manga themselves as forms, but also of a broad scope of forms that are relevant to both manga and anime. What this “form-conscious” approach means is that the Companion is first and foremost a collection of studies of “visuals, voices and storytelling”, the roles of the different parties involve in manga/anime production, and, ultimately, audiences and fans.
…this volume offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media
At the same time, the Companion also makes some specific statements that are key to how any discussion about anime and manga even develops. In this way, right in the book’s opening chapter, Prof. Berndt takes the position that while “Manga is often translated as Japanese comics, just as anime is frequently defined as Japanese animation”, for the purposes of this book, “manga and anime” refer to particular kinds of Japanese comics and animation – “corporate productions published in specialized venues and formats: not American-modeled “comic books” but magazines, trade paperbacks (tankōbon), and webtoons in the case of manga; TV series and related franchise movies of drawing-based animation in the case of anime…”
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The idea that academic libraries can include Japanese animation in their collections of films and television series is neither new nor controversial. The purpose of an academic library is to serve its user community, and to facilitate effective teaching and research – and providing access to Japanese animation, such as, for example, to support the students enrolled in a class like “Anime: Masterworks of Japanese Animation” (Middlebury College, Fall 2018) or “Anime Cinema” (University of North Florida, Spring 2019) absolutely fits into this purpose. But, with literally thousands of anime films and series available for purchase, how can an academic librarian actually go about selecting particular anime to add to a particular collection? 
Nobuko Anan, in 
One of the most powerful steps in the development process of a new academic field is the launch of a journal to collect and present new scholarly writing in the field. If nothing else, a journal means that enough scholars are interested in a particular topic area or on a particular subject to support the existence of one – and thus, can signal that the area or subject is supported by an actual community. In this way, publications such as