Anime in Japan

Anime in Japan



While animation features a legacy in the United States, it's also increasingly popular all over the world, most notably in Japan. In animation school, a lot of students have been greatly affected by Japanese animation, also known as Anime.


Considering that the early 1900s, Anime has served being an impact on many American animators and filmmakers. There are various styles of anime in Japan, yet it had been relatively unknown in america till the 1960s when programs including Speed Racer were broadcast on American TV.



There are numerous types of anime, including Mecha which was more science fiction based and had a tendency to use robots inside a futuristic setting, Manga, which can be primarily print based and Hentai, which is generally pornographic in general.



Many anime were shown on television, before the internet and the immediate availability of sites like You Tube. Years before I visited animation school, I recall going to a children's show called Kimba the White Lion, which addressed a lion cub along with his friends in the jungle. I used to be interested in the design of animation, which seemed very different than I used to be used to seeing in the media. The characters had huge eyes and human features as well as the characters mouths didn't move synchronously using the dialogue. This was very representative of the style, although at first I thought that this was due to the program being dubbed in English.AnydayAnime



Japanese anime slowly made its way over to the US within the 1970s. Probably the most popular was called Battle in the Planets, which handled a team of teenage superheroes who defended the planet from a types of aliens. However, Battle for the Planets, I realized years later when I was in animation school the show was originally titled Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and that the content was heavily sanitized for American audiences (the original version being incredibly violent), not to mention that the plot had been drastically altered as well as the characters names. To clearly cash in on the then current Star Wars craze, the American distributors added an R2D2 type robot within an underwater fortress who narrated each episode as well as also fill out for the violent scenes that were cut.



Even during its truncated version, Battle of the Planets exposed a generation of kids to anime as well as its popularity managed to make it more available in the US. Since then, many animated television series make it towards the US in addition to scores of animated films.



Inside the 1990s anime was incredibly popular, so that as students in animation school, I was intrigued by its popularity. As anime dates back to the early 1900s, it was interesting to learn that there were different types of anime available, yet in Japan the animators at the time were attempting to compete with companies such as Disney in terms of style. However, anime would change in the days leading up to World War Two as most films were created to serve as pro-nationalistic propaganda.



Within the post war era, anime experienced a resurgence of sorts, particularly with the creation of television. It was often compared to the limited animation programs by Filmmation Studios, as very few anime slowly came to the US. However the anime was often more expressive, with greater use of detail and incorporated more fantasy elements. In animation school, it was very inspiring, especially when the film Akira was introduced in 1988 because it heralded a larger popularity and allowed for your films of directors Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii to possess greater distribution.