 Fred Patten
(left) is best known in anime fandom from his work with the Cartoon/Fantasy
Organization, and Gilles Poitras (right) is best known as the author of
books that explain the anime world and Japanese culture to fans. At Fanime
Con on Friday, they two writers discovered they had something else in common,
they've both worked in libraries. Patten was a technical librarian for
Hughes Aircraft before going to work for Streamline Pictures, and Poitras
is currently the director of Information Resources at the Exploratorium
Museum in San Francisco. Both men are interested in the literary side of
anime and manga, and they talked about that subject on Friday. |
 Poitras loves
learning the details about the production of anime series, and he hoped
to promote web sites that contained those details in an "onsen mark" program.
However, it's been hard to find those sites, he said, noting that most
fan sites are limited to character descriptions and pictures. (Note: this
site recommends Richard's
Animated Divots for information on the chronology of anime.) In the
meantime, Poitras has released yet another book on the basics of anime,
intended as a new version of the "anime beginners' guide" once written
by British author Helen McCarthy. |
 However, being
literate about anime doesn't mean being literal, according to Patten, who
writes for Animation World Magazine. Anime and manga have long stretches
of storytelling where moods and atmospheres are set by silences and panels
without words. That practice gets lost in some English-language translations,
and Patten doesn't appreciate the changes. He dates the fill-in-the-blanks
changes back to the days when Carl Macek of Streamline was ordered to fill
silent spaces in anime with dialogue and narration. |
