The History Of Animes Journey To America
Anime has taken the world by storm. The abundance of shows and films is matched only by how easy it is to watch your favorite anime. But, how did this export from Japan become such a huge phenomenon in America? Which shows and films paved the way for anime to become the empire it is today?
Reasons Why Anime Is Experiencing A Huge Growth In Popularity
Whether youre a fan of Japanese culture or have stuck to mainly western forms of entertainment, anime is a term that youve likely heard of. With an industry that exceeds $19.1 billion USD in its home country of Japan, anime is experiencing a surge of popularity overseas in the west which is contributing to its record revenue sales.
However, many people assume that anime is restricted to its video incarnation. These days, even the word anime has grown past its original meaning and is now a term used to describe art or even games that originate from Japan and is drawn and created in its iconic style. In this post, well be covering 10 reasons why anime has experienced massive growth in popularity over the past few years and why it will continue to make its way to our shores.
Tetsuwan Atomu: The First Japanese Television Anime
On January 1, 1963, Fuji Television broadcast a 30-minute animated television series called Tetsuwan Atomu . The show became a surprise hit, starting an anime boom and a period of intense competition for TV audiences. The success marked the beginning of a new kind of anime industry.
The low franchise fees paid to the studio for Tetsuwan Atomu meant that the company needed to come up with a way to drastically cut production costs. They ruthlessly cut the number of drawings, trimmed the number of lines in each image to the bare minimum, and took to using more still images. They worked to make the storylines quicker and devised clever ways of simulating movement, from sound effects to the dialogue.
The company offset its losses with copyright incomelicensing the rights for the Atom character to their corporate sponsor, confectionary maker Meiji Seika, who used the character on a popular brand of chocolates. When the company still posted a loss, Tezuka decided to invest his own income from manga publishing. It was a generous gesture typical of the man they called the god of manga.
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What Are Anime And Manga
In Japan, anime is simply an abbreviation for animation. Outside Japan, anime refers to the specifically Japanese style of animation. So while an animation from anywhere in the world is called anime in Japan, in the U.S. and elsewhere anime means animation created in Japan.
Similarly, to the Japanese, manga means all comics and cartooning. It comes from two Japanese characters for whimsical and pictures. Outside of Japan, manga identifies the Japanese style of comics created for both children and adults.
A large percentage of anime is adapted from existing manga books, and some successful anime series are adapted to manga versions.
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How Did Anime Start Origins Of A Worldwide Phenomenon
Anime has touched just about every person on this planet in one way or another. Irrespective of age, sex, or cultural background Anime has broken all barriers and spread like wildfire. Together, lets go back in time and answer the question how did anime start?
Depending on who you are and where you are from, the word Anime can mean different things. It can conjure up a universe of improbable adventures. Or perhaps an art form. Or an idea of the victory of good over evil or a fight for justice against insurmountable odds.
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The First Big Anime In The West
Some of the first massively successful anime both in Japan and the West were works such as Astro Boy and Speed Racer. The former is about a future dominated by robots in which a robot boy with a heart of gold defends his city, giving rise to one of the most venerable anime franchises over the years. Speed Racer, which is about a young man who becomes a prominent race car driver, is easily one of the best-known “classic” anime among even older Westerners, who instantly recognize the series even if they don’t know what anime is. Its art style and storytelling were notable during the era, making a huge impression on youngsters who were none the wiser about its foreign origins.
Another similar series was Gigantor, which was one of many shows of the time starring a boy and his giant robot. The series was an Americanized adaptation of Tetsujin-28, paving the way for giant robot fiction as well as, along with Speed Racer, a somewhat unfortunate precedent of heavily editing material for Western audiences. More and more, these somewhat outlandish concepts would become the face of the anime industry, which itself was becoming increasingly synonymous with popular culture back in Japan. However, anime as a broad concept still wasn’t on American radars, although this would change as home video releases and otaku culture began to be exported among immigrant communities.
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A Deep And Rich History
Anime technically started over a century ago in 1917 with one of the first animated films being released in Japan. More recent anime tropes started around 1970 with the 1980s being known as the golden age of anime. This is where Japanese animation exploded with different genres. In the background, manga authors were still hard at work creating original series, but new blood was also being introduced after being inspired by works created during the 1970s.
This is just the tip of the history that surrounds Japanese animation. The history of Japanese animation is intriguing, deep and much of it can only be experienced by visiting Japan and surrounding yourself in its culture.
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The First Japanese Television Anime: Tetsuwan Atomu
On January 1, 1963, Fuji Television broadcast a 30-minute animated television series called Astro Boy, known in Japan by its original name Mighty Atom or . the first popular animated Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime. Astro Boy has become one of the most successful manga and anime franchises in the world. The combined 23 tankbon volumes have sold over 100 million copies worldwide making it the tenth best-selling manga series of all time. The early 1990s served as what was known to be an anime boom. Due to this, anime culture further evolved when anime conventions started taking place.
Anime’s Influence On Japans Culture
In Japan, anime dominates pop culture. In contrast, the West only views it as a new form of entertainment.
For instance, Japan’s colossal pop culture includes music, video games, local Japanese cuisine, cinemas, and TV. And anime finds its way into all of this.
It goes side by side with all these entertainment categories and, this is something only seen in Japan and not the rest of the world.
Additionally, most of Japan’s pop culture segments can also trace their origins to Japanese art.
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Why Is Anime So Great
1.1. Storytelling
People may wonder Why is anime so good? and here is probably the answer. Anime offers some of the most complex and creative storylines, worlds, and characters. Even manga-based products are dramatic and incredible, illustrated wonderfully in every scene. As anime is a story told over a sequence of episodes, each episode is plot-oriented, refreshing, and unpredictable. Animes narrative is intellectually challenging and stimulating which gains great emotional involvement from the viewer.
1.2. Beautiful Animation And Art-style
People think about anime as a Japanese art form with a physical and aesthetic allure. Its kinda basic artwork but visually striking and richly fascinating. Complex details and shapes, as well as a lot of shadows, lightings and gradients are added in almost everything: the eyes, the hair, the body and face proportion, the scenery, etc. Each facial expression represents a different personality, feeling, experience and trait. Also, every human emotion can be vividly depicted through the eyes. Hair is always uniquely styled. The movement of hair is usually exaggerated to emphasize the action and magnify the visual effect.
Eyes:
Most Western characters have fairly simple eyes: white circles with black dots in the middle, while anime usually give a lot of details to eyes
In anime, if you zoom in the image and take the gradients, lightings and shadows into account, just the eyes alone easily have somewhere about from 6 to 11 colors
Hair:
S: The Internet Age And The Voice Actor Boom
‘Hare Hare Yukai’ from ‘The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’ by Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki Nagato and Mikuru Asahina
The success of Hare hare yukai, the ending theme to the first season of late-night schoolgirl adventure series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, established a new style of anime song in which characters from the show sing and dance to the theme. Consequently, a select few stars led by Nana Mizuki began to blur the boundaries between voice acting and musical stardom.
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Are You Seeing These Signs
As you can see, married couples get divorced for several reasons.
Usually, it’s not one thing that drives a couple apart, but many. If you and your spouse no longer see eye to eye look for some of the crucial signs and signals of a potential divorce before it’s too late.
What are some of those signs?
- A loss of interest in sex
- They act indifferent to you
- Hiding their phone
No Not All Japanese People Like Anime
So, yes, anime is popular in Japan.
However, it wouldn’t be so surprising if we were to find out that Japanese people often ask, why is Disney so popular in America?
These would be good questions. Yet, we know, living here, that, really, not everyone likes or even watches Disney Shows.
In the same way, of course, a lot of Japanese people don’t care at all about anime. Just as plenty of Americans don’t like Hollywood, or plenty of Colombians don’t dance
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Isekai Anime: Explaining The Genre’s History And How It’s Changed
Rachael is a passionate long-time anime fan, who enjoys writing about the storytelling aspect of anime, manga, and light novels.
From the anime “Trapped in Another World With My Smartphone”.
If you’re keeping up with current anime, you’ll notice a few things all the worst anime of every season have. These include:
- being based on a light novel
- having excessive ‘fan service’, usually meaning improbably jiggly boobs, and
- being either isekai or harem genre, if not both.
While the isekai and harem genres can be good, they often strictly adhere to a formula so writers can crank out a story quickly that will appeal to a male otaku audience, without much effort.
Isekai means ‘a strange world’ in Japanese. The genre gets that name from the many light novels that use this word in the title. It’s usually translated as ‘another world’ in English. So it’s a sub-genre of fantasy in which a protagonist, or group of characters, end up in a fantasy world from the real world. It doesn’t have to be a physical world this genre can also include venturing into a realistic virtual world, like Digimon, Sword Art Online, and .hack//sign.They are usually teleported to this other world involuntarily and suddenly, and usually want to find a way to get back home.
Reasons Anime Popularity Is Booming
Posted by Betty Bugle | Sep 20, 2021 | Stuff We Like | 0
Youve undoubtedly heard the term anime before. Anime is a word that most people have encountered at some point in their lives. With a revenue of more than $19 billion USD in Japan, anime is experiencing an unprecedented rise in popularity overseas, with a contributing role to its record sales.
Anime is a style of animated art that has gained popularity in recent years. Its all about bright colors, creative characters, and fantastic tales. Have you ever wondered why anime is so popular? Why is it so appealing to audiences?
There are several anime video applications that just provide anime streaming. Because there are over 2 billion people on the planet who enjoy this form of entertainment.
But have you ever thought, in the past, TV was the only medium to watch movies and shows? But now people can watch TV shows, movies, and a lot more on different platforms and streaming services on a variety of different devices.
Now, the world has different means and platforms of entertainment to watch their favorite shows and movies. Netflix is one of those platforms because it provides many choices for what people want to watch.
Now, a new choice that Netflix has is anime, it is a whole new genre that some people may not have seen before but now they will watch it just because it will be a whole new experience for them. This is also a reason that anime has become more popular in the world.
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When Did Anime First Become Popular Outside Of Japan
Long before the 1990s, anime was sporadically released in the West, with these old-school classics often being heavily edited for American viewers.
Anime is currently at its most popular across the globe, with the medium being more mainstream than ever in the West. Many look back at the 1990s as the era in which the medium first got big outside of Japan, with shows like Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon bringing in a generation of viewers to the wide world of anime fandom. Otaku nowadays have a veritable smorgasbord at their disposal through which to watch anime, with various streaming services offering decades worth of animated material. It wasn’t always this way, however, with anime once being far less than even niche in the West.
Long before the hits of the ’90s, anime was only sporadically released in the West, with these old-school classics often being heavily edited for Americans. Decades of drip releases finally softened American viewers, however, opening the floodgates for many audiences to not only accept anime, but embrace it wholeheartedly. Here’s a brief look at how anime got to be where it is today and how the road to the successes of the ’90s was actually paved all the way back in the 1960s.
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How Did Anime Start: The Origin Story
If we seek to answer the question How did Anime start, we need to go back over a hundred years. Japan is the land of birth of this art form.
But if one digs deeper, it becomes clear that in Japanese any kind of animation is referred to as Anime. When the rest of the world was introduced to anime, it was adopted as Japanese anime.
But why the difference? If we had the time stone, maybe we could have gone back in time and figured it out. But alas, we possess no such stone or power. Perhaps its an homage to this incredible art form that has showcased adventure and creativity in its way.
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How Anime Influenced The World :
More shows were showing up in other countries, too. Anime has become one of the best resources nowadays to tell stories in an animated form, with freedom of expression in any genre and for any audience. Star Blazers is an American animated television series adaptation of the Japanese anime series Space Battleship Yamato . Star Blazers was the .first broadcast in the United States in 1979. It was the first popular English-translated anime. Another major hit, Macross , was transformed along with two other shows into Robotech, the first anime series to make major inroads on home video in America. Mazinger Z showed up in many Spanish-speaking countries, the Philippines, and Arabic-speaking nations. And the earlier series Heidi, Girl of the Alps had found great popularity across Europe, Latin America, and even Turkey. In fact, Italy imported the most anime outside of Japan. These mass imports influenced anime popularity in South American, Arabic and German markets. In the 1980s, anime became more accepted in the mainstream in Japan and experienced a boom in production. Following a few successful adaptations of anime in overseas markets in the 1980s, anime gained increased acceptance in those markets in the 1990s and even more at the turn of the 21st century.
Why Is Anime So Popular In America
Anime was unlike anything most Americans had seen at the time. It had a unique art style, it was violent, it was insane because people were flying around shooting laser beams and blowing up mountains, and it was a power fantasy. Anime opened up a world that Americans never experienced in any film or book. It inspires people to be more childish and says its okay to be, even as an adult. In America anime makes us feel like were learning something about another culture, despite it being only a small pocket of knowledge about a foreign country.
4. How Popular Is Anime In The World?
Its been watched globally since the 2000s. Not only the US, other Western countries like France and Germany are also big fans of anime. Commercially, it contributed $17.7 billion of revenue to the Japanese film industry in 2016, in which Asia market accounts for 40%, North America 12%, and Europe contributes the rest of the 26%.
Whats most striking is how animes impact is coming full circle. Some recent American cartoon productions, like Avatar: The last airbender are openly inspired by anime itself, and live-action English-language versions of anime titles are starting to come into production more frequently. Every year there are a couple of shows that pull in a large audience from the non-anime community because of all the hype, celebrities talking about it, and the memes.
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