How does anime “think” technology? This is the basic question that informs Thomas Lamarre's study of Japanese animation, which he approaches as an “animetic machine.” Lamarre distinguishes “machine” from “machinery” by borrowing Felix Guattari's theorization of the machine as a series of relations and intervals between different technologies rather than merely a distinct piece of hardware (pp. 33, 301). This idea is opened up further by Lamarre as “exploded projection,” which he uses to rethink how the sense of movement in animation stabilizes different kinds of viewing positions (panoramic and enclosed) and flattens out the multiplanar image into an assemblage of images that, within the same frame, are taken apart and put back together (pp. 174–75). For Lamarre, the “machine force” of animation reopens the structures of technology and perception that seem inherent in the apparatus to produce a viewing position that he calls the “subjectile,” which is neither subject nor object, but a projection upon a line of sight (pp. 127–28).

In explaining this interest in the “machine-ness” of animation, Lamarre begins by situating his project in relation to other recent studies of anime, which are described as preoccupied with how these films and television series “think” Japan or the cultures of fandom that consume them. For Lamarre, the risk of this focus on cultural analysis is the production of animation as “just another text” that confirms “Japan,” and not something possessing distinct technological properties or series of relations (p. ix). What is at stake, then, is animation's status as a set of visual technologies and its place within larger networks of commerce and intellectual discourse (the so-called information society). In order to provide another option for the current academic debate over this topic, Lamarre tries to rethink the properties of movement, surface, and depth that are produced within animated works from Japan at the level of style, production, and content.

Lamarre sets out to accomplish this task by employing a diverse array of theoretical tools. The first section, “Multiplanar Image,” reads the films of Miyazaki Hayao (and 1986's Castle in the Sky in particular) alongside Paul Virilio's “cinematism” and Martin Heidegger's argument about the “essence” of technology in order to develop a theory of the “technological condition” that informs these films and their attitude toward ballistic perspective and military weaponry. Here Lamarre provides an analysis of the animation stand as a Guattarrian machine, which he sees as a multiplanar tool for developing a sense of movement and depth by manipulating image and surface. The following section, “The Exploded View,” focuses on Gainax's Daicon III Opening Animation (1981) and Nadia (1989–90), reading those works alongside Gilles Deleuze's two-part book on cinema, Murakami Takashi's theorization of “superflat” art, and writings on otaku culture by Okada Toshio and Azuma Hiroki. Here Lamarre tries to complicate the division between “full animation” and “limited animation” by rethinking how a sense of movement is achieved by “sliding” and the role of the surface of the image in determining sensations of depth (p. 40). The third and final section is “Girl Computerized,” which introduces psychoanalytic theory (particularly that of Jacques Lacan, Saito Tamaki, and feminist critics of Lacan) in analyzing the manga-turned-animated series Chobits (2001). Here Lamarre develops a reading of the relationship between so-called classical cinema, manga, and animated adaptations of manga alongside an interpretation of how gender and subjectivity are produced (or not) in relation to recent theorizations of the “grand database” and the “media mixing” of anime. Questions of the binary theorization of modernity and postmodernity and the relationship between modernity and technology inform Lamarre's argument throughout the book, particularly in the second and third sections.

The result is a compelling and innovative reading of Japanese animation that opens up new theoretical and disciplinary possibilities for investigating these works. Studies of Japanese animation have been growing steadily over the past decade or so, but even within that sense of “new terrain,” Lamarre's work feels like an intervention that changes the stakes at a fundamental level. Scholars of Japan may be suspicious of the “unthinking” of Japan that seems inherent in Lamarre's project of interrogating the technological properties of animation, but even with that shift in focus, his book remains engaged with academic debates about postmodernity in Japan (particularly in relation to Murakami and Azuma's recent theories about art and fan culture), how the narrative of modernization is often “always already” present in theories of technology and the cinematic apparatus, and in analyzing discussions of contemporary networks of media, commerce, and consumption in Japan (and of Japan-made products). The value of Lamarre's work for scholars interested in Japan (but possibly not animation or film in general) is his ability to complicate familiar readings of Japan as a coherent area of study and his ability to produce powerful and clear theoretical arguments about topics such as modernity and technology. Lamarre's interest throughout the book seems to be on instances of deviation, movement, and the spaces produced by mixing. This sensibility informs his dedication to interrogating the gaps and intervals of animation, technology, and Japan, and how those topics are constituted theoretically. This theoretical regimen seems partially informed by Brian Massumi's recent work on Deleuze and cultural studies, particularly in relation to the borrowings from experimental science and technology studies (see Parables for the Virtual: Movement Affect, Sensation [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002]).

With such an intensely theoretical approach at its core, The Anime Machine might be too complicated a text to be used successfully in undergraduate courses on animation. Similarly, although Lamarre's close readings of works such as Castle in the Sky and Daicon III Opening Animation are incredibly compelling, he only reads a small number of works in such detail, which might also hamper how useful this text could be for an undergraduate courses organized around formal analysis. For the same reason, this book probably will not be an attractive option for fans looking for more information on their favorite series or films. The real value of Lamarre's work is in its productive and evocative departure from familiar territory and the way in which he “explodes” animation as a medium of art and as a medium of relating to technology. In that sense, scholars of cinema and new media will benefit greatly from Lamarre's contribution to theorizing the technology of animation and the relationship of the “machine” to the cinematic apparatus. His mobilization of Deleuze's writings on cinema in particular will be of interest to scholars of films, as might his reconsiderations of the cinematic apparatus as Paul Virilio, both of which have recently fallen to the sidelines of film studies. Japanese animation has not received a lot of attention from scholars of film, but Lamarre's rigorous engagement with theoretical works in his close readings of these animations seems to respond to the basic concern of Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto's call for theoretical engagement with Japanese cinema studies in his recent book on Kurosawa (Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000]).

I look forward to the scholarship that this book may help to inspire and the direction in which it could take anime studies. Lamarre's contribution is a rare work of theoretical rigor and clarity that breathes new life into fundamental questions about studying Japan and raises new concerns about how media and technology can be understood in relation to their audience and the apparatus that produces (and is produced by) them.