Hi there! As you already noticed, today’s post is about another one of the best animation industries… that’s right! ANIME! Who doesn’t know Heidi, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Naruto, Saint Seiya, Totoro, Astro Boy, Captain Tsubasa, Digimon, One Piece…? And these are only some of the most known ones!
Anime (“Japanese animation”) is easily one of the biggest joys of my life, just like Disney! But let's focus on the main subject: the history of Japanese Animation! Today I'll be sharing with you the early ages of this industry, as well as its development and growth till the modern age. So, are you excited to start?! Because I’m already dying to know your own opinions about this, as well as extra info if you have some for me!
We’ll have to travel back to the 1900s! This period may be far from as glamorous as the decades that followed, but just as important. It is impossible to say exactly where it all began, as most of the animation of the time was destroyed or lost. In a time when an animation would only have one copy released on film, it’s not much of a surprise that such things would happen, especially with Kanto’s earthquake, but we'll get there in a minute... we still have some records of early Japanese Animation to consider!
Japan began producing animation in the Age of silent films through trial-and-error drawing and cut-out animation techniques, based on animated shorts from France and the United States. Japan’s pre-World War II animation records had a unique screening style called katsuben, which is basically a live narration performance for silent films. Until the end of the silent era in 1939, a person, or a group of people, always supplied a verbal component to the motion-picture show. The most widely accepted Japanese word for this “narrator” is benshi, although the term changed over time. The Benshi formed a central part of the “silent movie” experience in Japan by explaining what the motion picture was about, either before, during, or after the show. While one can find examples of similar motion picture narration elsewhere in the world, Japan is the only place where narrators proved to be an influential and integral part of silent cinema!
Note: nowhere else in the world was “silent cinema” ever truly silent—music was always a part of the show. In Japan, music also accompanied the film but was used in a symbiotic relationship with the benshi. If music was playing, then the audience would not be able to hear the benshi. Thus, the orchestra had to coordinate with the benshi when to play, when to play quietly, and when to remain silent!
To many “silent” cinema fans in Japan, the benshi were a major attraction. It was usually the film that drew people to the theater, but it was often the benshi that determined which theater a person would attend! These "narrators" were huge cultural stars of the time earning as much, if not more, than many actors! Japanese movie theaters were quite large, with an average seating capacity of 1000 seats, and the benshi performed without a microphone so, clearly, one of their greatest skills was projecting their unamplified voice within the cavernous theater!
During the Golden Age, a benshi typically only performed for an hour, with several benshi dividing up long films into one-hour segments. Still, they had to perform four to five shows a day, seven days a week!… It’s impossible that they wouldn’t get hoarse with so much talking, right?! Anyway, films generally changed every week, thus, the benshi had to come up with new “setsumei” (film expositions) Every. Single. Week! Then perform it in a fresh, entertaining, and engaging way, roughly thirty times during the week! The benshi truly were “Poets of the Dark”!
Turning the attention to the animations, as a starting point, we have the Katsudo Shashin, a three-second animation where we can see a boy writing something on a wall and then turning around to tip his hat, which was released in 1907 (the first piece of animation that is shown in the video above). It was made using fifty different frames, each of which was stenciled onto a strip of celluloid (a type of thermoplastic film). Now, although it is technically an animation, it is only three seconds long!
It wasn’t until a whole decade later, in 1917, that we would get a solid piece of animation with Namakura Gatana (second piece of the video). Actually, to be fully correct, the first commercial anime that was officially produced and broadcasted in Japan (the one that most people agree to be the first, anyway) was called Dekobō Shingachō: Meian no Shippai, but like most animes of the time the original copies did not stand the test of time – most of them were cut up and sold as individual frames or strips to collectors.
So, officially, the first piece of anime we have a record of is the Namakura Gatana. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a very short animation, but it started to show the Japanese style of anime technique. The technique used in these was called cutter animation: this is where animators would cut out objects and move them around. It was a much cheaper approach than the higher quality Cel animation that other countries were using at the time, but that’s something that would be corrected in a few years!
The Japanese Animation had a massive setback in 1923, and if you’re thinking “Kanto’s earthquake”... you’re absolutely right! I told you we would talk about it eventually! Anyway, it isn’t that hard to imagine what this disastrous phenomenon caused, right? As my philosophy teacher would have said… it was a Snowball effect! The earthquake comes, all hasty and vigorous, the city gets destroyed, the buildings are destroyed, the movie studios are destroyed, conclusion: the animation records are destroyed! Damaged, crushed, smashed, ruined, eradicated, as exterminated as John (for those who have seen the Exterminator!)... Completely. Annihilated. To. Ash! But be strong, my dears! Although the animation industry was pushed back a bit, it rapidly recovered and evolved to the great mini-giant it is today!
Hulton Deutsch / Getty Images
So, as animation was progressing throughout the world of the likes of Disney, Japan felt like they needed to catch up! Many animators started using Cel animation, which gave the quality of their animations a massive boost! Now you ask, what on earth does Cel animation mean? Well, let me enlighten you! Cel animation is the art of creating 2D animation by hand on sheets of transparent plastic called “cels”. Following a planning process, animators transfer draft drawings onto the cels, each “cel” featuring one drawing, with an outline on one side of the plastic and the color being filled in on the other. These “cels” are then placed over a background and photographed in sequence, and when played back at a speed of 12 or 24 frames they create the illusion of movement. It is rare for traditional Cel animation to be used in modern productions since everything is digital now, but it surely was a very interesting, although draining, technique!
Evolving from visual forms such as manga (style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels) and kamishibai (picture card storytelling), Japan's 1920s-40s animated films freely mixed folktales and stories with modern Western elements. Drawing upon myriad influences, Japanese Animation created a fantastical world where characters resembling icons such as Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop play chambara (sword fight) in samurai outfits. People rapidly started talking about the high quality of Japanese “manga films”. But Japanese Anime was costlier to produce than Western Animations and were still overshadowed by the popularity of Disney cartoons.
The industry continued to struggle, unable to respond adequately to successive innovations, including the appearance of the first talkies in 1929 and color film in 1932. But, eventually, Japan got its first anime film to make its presence felt on international grounds… Ōfuji Noburō’s “The Thief of Baguda Castle'', which he made by cutting and pasting chiyogami (Japanese colored paper)!
Japanese Animation faced an uphill battle from the start! And the beginning of WWII only came to further complicate animators' lives… seriously though, they were extremely unlucky! First the earthquake, then Disney constantly stealing the spotlight (not that they didn’t deserve it, though), and now the war! What’s next, the earth’s colonization by atomic ants?! Ah, well… back to the main subject: with the start of the war, the majority of the Japanese Animations ended up being propaganda videos, showing Japanese soldiers fighting Americans, most of them being quite racist and violent! Nevertheless, it was in this context that the first full-length theatrical film in the history of Japanese Anime was released! “Momotarō’s Divine Sea Warriors”, a 74-minute film produced by the navy, came out just before the end of the war. This was a propagandistic film designed to lift morale and commitment to the war effort.
Curiosity: soon after the war ended, the General Headquarters of the Allied occupation (GHQ) brought together 100 anime artists in the bombed-out ruins of Tokyo to form the Shin Nihon Dōgasha (New Japan Animation Company)! The aim was to make it easier to spread occupation policies by having the artists produce anime in praise of democracy. However, many of the artists were fiercely independent and territorial, and the company was riven by disagreements from the outset. The project strayed off course and eventually disbanded. Even GHQ threw in the towel! It seemed the switch from militarism to democracy was not going to be so easy!
As Japan began to recover from the disastrous war, Ōkawa Hiroshi, president of the Tōei film company, saw Disney’s Snow White (1937) and was overwhelmed by the gorgeous color of the film! In 1956, he built a modern studio and founded Tōei Dōga (now Tōei Animation, you might not remember this name, but I could bet my favorite chocolate bar that you know at least one of their projects). Sir Hiroshi’s ambition: to become “the Disney of the East”!
Quick curiosity: Tōei Animation is internationally renowned for producing numerous series, including Sally the Witch, Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon, Digimon, One Piece, The Transformers (1984–1990), and the Precure series.
Tōei Dōga’s first full-length film, Hakujaden (The Legend of the White Snake), was released in October 1958, based on a Chinese tale. Hayao Miyazaki - for those who don’t know/remember who the man is, he’s just co-founder of the internationally famous Studio Ghibli, a masterful storyteller, and one of the most accomplished filmmakers of all time! - who saw the film during a break from studying for his college entrance exams, was astonished by its quality! Who knows if it wasn’t at that moment that this genius fell in love with animation, right?! The truth is that, not much later, Miyazaki, along with his longtime partner Takahata Isao (also co-founder of the Studio Ghibli), began their careers at Tōei. Both were active members of the labor union, Takahata serving as vice-chairman and Miyazaki as secretary-general!
Now, what did Tōei do to get its name on the map? You see, they were really, REALLY, serious with the “Disney of the East” thing! So serious that they sent a research team to the United States and invited several experts to travel to Japan as mentors! As a result, they were able to master the Disney system of “assembly-line production”. They hired a team of new employees who honed their skills while they produced the film under the supervision of veteran animators like Mori Yasuji and Daikuhara Akira.
Moving on to January 1, 1963, Fuji Television broadcasted for the first time a 30-minute animated television series called “Astro Boy”, created by the often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, Tezuka Osamu, "the Father/Godfather/God of Manga"!...I guess they couldn't come to an agreement about what title fitted him better, so they must have thought: “Why not all of them?”...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, letting us one step closer to the anime phenomenon we know today!
Curiosity: Tezuka also worked for Tōei Animations, but didn’t enjoy his time there, especially because he felt he had no control over "his" story (a little bit of controversy here) or the ending, later leading to founding the production company Mushi Productions, a pioneer studio in TV Animation in Japan responsible for many successful anime television series and adult-oriented feature films, as a rival of Tōei!
Tezuka: “revenge is a dish that is served cold!”.
Merchandising became entrenched as part of the basic business model for all the television anime that followed! The most popular genre dealt with science fiction and space, followed by shows about girls with magical powers which, I admit, are a bit boring nowadays, but I’m sure that we all, anime fans, have been mesmerized with them at some point in our lives!
In 1968, the popular baseball-themed Kyojin no Hoshi (Star of the Giants) began, followed in the next year by the first episode of the family drama Sazae-san, which continues to this day as the longest-running series in anime history with over 7500 episodes! Yes, longer than One Piece! But not every series could be a winner, and with a glut on the market, competition intensified!
At Tōei Dōga, which was running a deficit due to high production costs, labor-management relations deteriorated, leading to a lockout and layoffs in the summer of 1972! Mushi Production, where Astro Boy was born, went bankrupt in 1973 (although the labor union later took over from Tezuka, the founder, and has led the company until the present day). The anime industry went into recession, and behind this recession were larger economic issues, such as the Nixon Shock in 1971 and the 1973 oil crisis… yes, more disasters!
Amidst the recessionary mood of these bleak years, a new work appeared that challenged the idea of anime as simply children’s entertainment: Uchū senkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato), released as a TV series in 1974 and a feature film in 1977, became a social phenomenon, tremendously popular with millions of young adults.
The 70s were also marked by the inauguration of Madhouse, a Japanese Animation studio founded in 1972 by ex–Mushi Productions animators after their previous company closed (there you go! Never givin’ up is the spirit!). They would grow up to be one of the biggest studios in the industry, producing numerous well-known shows like Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Black Lagoon, Death Note, Wolf Children, Parasyte: The Maxim, the first Beyblade anime series, the 2011 anime adaptation of Hunter × Hunter and the first season of One-Punch Man.
An equally important studio called Sunrise Inc. was also founded that same year by ex–Mushi Productions animators (these animators were on fire!), being renowned for popular original anime series such as Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, as well as its numerous adaptations of acclaimed light novels including Crest of the Stars, Dirty Pair, and Accel World, and manga such as City Hunter, Inuyasha, Gin Tama, and Kekkaishi.
Meanwhile, Japanese television anime began to become popular among young people overseas! In some countries, adults rejected it, calling it “Japanimation” and criticizing it as cheap, violent, and sexually explicit (idiots!). When Kyandi kyandi (Candy Candy) was broadcast in France, in 1976, young girls were glued to the television screen! Some parents resented this, claiming their children were being corrupted by a strange culture from the Orient. Nevertheless, the anime fan base continued to grow around the world, mostly among young people.
In the 80s, also referred to as “the Golden Age of Anime”, American publishers started using Japanese animators and studios for their cartoons, releasing shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers. And, still, in this decade, the world saw the rise of Dragon Ball, an anime series I doubt anyone doesn’t know, at the very least, by name! This global phenomenon opened up a whole new genre, and, in my opinion, one of the best ones: the Martial Arts genre!
And, last but not least, there was also the release of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, in 1984, which gave Miyazaki and Takahata the chance to founding the infamous Studio Ghibli a year later. After all, five of Studio Ghibli's movies are among the 10 highest-grossing anime films made in Japan, with Spirited Away being recently pushed from number one to number two, grossing over US$380 million worldwide!
Many of their works have also won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award, and four have won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. Five of Studio Ghibli's movies have received Academy Award nominations. Spirited Away won the Golden Bear in 2002 and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003! Surely one of my all-time favorites! Totally recommend it if you haven't watched it yet… promise you won’t regret it!
(It is now available on Netflix too, and assuming that you’re from this century, I’m sure you have it available somewhere so go watch it!)
Curiosity: Miyazaki is one of the most renowned directors - and was actually inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2014, and won an Academy Honorary Award at the 87th Academy Awards - for titles such as Future Boy Conan (1978), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982–1994), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001) … damn, I’m already tired of enumerating his projects, and I only referred the most successful ones! But, we must not forget about sir Takahata, because he’s also helmed incredible titles like Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Pom Poko (1994), Heidi Girl Of The Alps, My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999), and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), which was actually nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Animated Feature Film!
The birth of home video revolutionized film and television around the world, and Japan’s love of technology only served to fuel the growth of experimental anime. Creators worked on projects and manga adaptations that went straight to video, allowing them to be more experimental with storylines and animation methods. It also allowed for more and more people overseas to access anime – the process was still difficult, but it was more accessible than it had been previously.
Incredibly devoted clubs took to trading and importing any content they could get their hands on. Even developers of the new Laser Disk format saw these devoted otakus as a great opportunity to expand, and they set up their own major distributors in Japan and the United States.
Needless to say, the passion and dedication of Japanese animators meant that by the start of the 90s Japan had an extensive catalog of anime! Both anime movies and series had loyal, devoted fans, and were firm fixtures of Japanese culture. The late 80s had given birth to a whole new wave of people – otaku (literally translated geek or nerd) – people who were devoted to their interest. There was also an increased interest in animes aimed entirely at adults (we’re not talking about X-rated anime, which is a sub-genre entirely on its own) – these films and series had high amounts of sexuality and violence, making them far too adult to be seen by children. Censorship boards in Japan began to clamp down on what could be shown and when on Japanese television.
We’re talking about shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Ghost in the Shell, and Cowboy Bebop. Not only did these projects have a limited (and late-night) run on TV in Japan, they caused quite a stir overseas too! The Ghost in the Shell was actually a huge inspiration for the creators of The Matrix film series, showing how much of an influence anime had on western media at the time. A huge contributor to that reach was the fact that DVD technology had become commonplace at the start of the 2000s, making it much easier to get copies of popular anime with both subbed and dubbed versions on the same disc. And of course, the internet was starting to become a household commodity around this time too, meaning otaku all over the world could share in anime that would have taken them months to obtain previously!
This is not to undermine the level of success anime had already had up to this point in Japan and Asia, visibility in western markets isn’t the gauge by which we should determine whether something was successful or not. As you can see, anime was already a thriving market by the time it became “well-known” in the West. But, in my humble opinion, what was once seen as a “niche” interest for dorks and weirdos who frequented comic book shops, quickly became widely accepted as an impressive form of media!
And finally, we have the 2000s generation! People from my generation probably would agree when I say that we grew up watching shows like Pokémon, Dragonball Z, and Sailor Moon, and didn’t need any convincing that anime is amazing once we realized that’s what we’d grown up watching anyway! That, along with the fact that it’s awesome, is likely just one of the reasons movies like Your Name have had such success overseas, and why providers like Netflix can’t create titles as fast as they’re being watched!
Not that they need to – Japan’s animation studios are as prolific as ever, with no signs of slowing down. Streaming services like Netflix have added popular series to meet growing demand, but services like Crunchyroll have been meeting those needs for over a decade. And so, the already popular movement of anime keeps on growing, with many new titles released every year. Even in the newest animes, though, you can see the hard work of animators from decades before.
And to finish, I had to share this with you: did you know that, according to a 2004 document from the Japan External Trade Organization, anime films and television shows account for 60% of the world’s animation-based entertainment!… The document’s a little bit old, true, but that only means that it has an even bigger impact nowadays! About 40 schools in Japan have declared anime as an individual subject on its own! Anime voice acting is also huge, as Japan has more than 130 voice-acting schools! In Japan, more paper is used to print manga than toilet paper!
Oh! And before I forget it: ANIME IS NOT THE SAME AS “CARTOON,” CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF! With complicated stories and in-depth character development, anime avoids the cartoon label and makes claims on being a higher art form, so don’t mix it unless you want to upset the otaku community! (but if you do have a devoted otaku friend, you can always use this to upset him, just don’t blame me if he wants to hit you afterward XD)
Extras:
In Japan, it’s not surprising if you accidentally find a manga in the middle of the street! In Japan, it’s common that after someone finishes a manga volume, they’ll just leave it somewhere for someone to pick it up.
The anime Space Brothers includes a voice actor that recorded in outer space! How’s that?! For the 31st episode of the anime series Space Brothers, real-life astronaut Akihiko Hoshide made a guest appearance on the show and actually recorded his part aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Fifty new colors were created for Akira! The critically acclaimed movie Akira was also a huge technical achievement for the Japanese anime industry. It consisted of 2,212 shots and 160,000 single pictures. This is about 2-3 times more than the average anime movie! The majority of the scenes of the film were set to take place during the night, which was generally avoided by the animators during those days because of those scenes requiring extremely high usage of colors and that too with very high precision to make the film look pleasing. Akira broke all those norms and used an astounding number of 327 colors in the movie, of which 50 were exclusively created for the film and its scene requirements.
Tezuka began what was known as the manga revolution in Japan with his New Treasure Island published in 1947! His output would spawn some of the most influential, successful, and well-received manga series including the children mangas Astro Boy, Princess Knight, and Kimba the White Lion, and the adult-oriented series Black Jack, Phoenix, and Buddha, all of which won several awards. Sadly, sir Tezuka died of stomach cancer in 1989, and, as you can imagine, his death had an immediate impact on the Japanese public and other cartoonists. A museum was constructed in Takarazuka dedicated to his memory and life works, and Tezuka received many posthumous awards. Several animations were in production at the time of his death along with the final chapters of Phoenix, which were never released.
There is a reason why everyone in Code Geass loves pizza! Code Geass was sponsored by Pizza Hut and also ran a massive ad campaign for them… who would have thought, huh?!
Death Note is banned in China! When it comes to banning anime for inappropriate material, China certainly isn’t shy! The Chinese government has banned popular anime series like Highschool of the Dead, Attack on Titan, and Psycho-Pass without hesitation.
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