Anime in the Past
Some animators in the silent-era were Oten Shimokawa, Junichi Kouchi, Seitaro Kitayama, Sanae Yamamoto (whose 1924, "The Mountain Where Old Women Are Abandoned" seemed to be the earliest anime title that exists), Yasuji Murata, and the master of paper silhouette animation, Noboru Ofuji. Most of these people worked in small studios inside their homes. They were eventually financed by Japanese theatrical companies, which provided them some money in exchange for distribution rights.
During the 1930s, certain folk tales began to reflect off of Japanese militarism (some had a bit of humor), such as Mituyo Seo's 1934 11-minute cartoon, "Private 2nd-Class Norakuro", which was an adaptation of Suihou Tagawa's popular newspaper comic strip about an unlucky dog soldier in a funny-animal army. After Japan went to war in China in 1937, the need to get productions approved by government censors resulted in a huge amount of militaristic propaganda cartoons. In 1943, the Imperial military government decided that Japan needed its first animated feature. Mituyo Seo was authorized to gather a team of animators for this task. Their 74-minute Momotaro's "Gods-Blessed Sea Warriors" was a juvenile adventure showing the Imperial Navy as a bunch of brave, cute animal sailors that liberated Indonesia and Malaysia from the buffoonish foreign-devil (with horns^.^).
Animation was continued after World War II. However, this was still slowed a bit for the next decade due to the slow recovering of the Japanese economy. They also found out that their amateur films were competing with the polished cartoons from American studios. The first Japanese full-color animation did not appear until 1955. The first Japanese animator to achieve international name recognition was Yoji Kuri, whose art films that usually were less than a minute each, appeared in international film festivals throughout the 1960s and 70s.
American-Style Studios
Attempts to create American-style studios began right after the war, but the successful Americanized studio, Toei Animation Co., was organized in 1956. Its earliest leading animator, Yasuji Mori, directed Toei's first notable short cartoon, "Doodling Kitty", in May, 1957. Japan's entry into professional animation came with the company's first theatrical feature, "Panda and the Magic Serpent", which was released in October, 1958.
A couple of Toei's of features followed Walt Disney's procedures. They were based on popular Oriental folk tales, and the heroes had many cute animal companions. The first six were distributed into America a few years after they were shown in Japan. Unfortunately, these were not successful in the US and the Japanese theatrical animation disappeared from America for the until the 1970's.
Something Has Happened...
Alakazam the Great (one of the six movies) led to something unexpected. Although it was directed by Yabushita, it was based upon a popular 1950s comic-book adaptation by Osamu Tezuka of the ancient Chinese Monkey King legend. Tezuka was Japan's most popular comic-strip and comic-book artist during the 1950s. He basically invented Japan's first modern manga. Since the movie used his plot and visual style, he was consulted on its adaptation and became involved with its promotion. This caused him to switch from working on comic books to working on animations.
Tezuka was also impressed by the appearance in Japan of the first Hanna-Barbera television cartoons of the late 1950s. He realized from the popularity of his comic books (e.g. Astro Boy) that there was a strong demand for modern, fast-paced fantasy, in which the animators in Japan were completely ignoring.
As a result of this, Tezuka organized Japan's first TV animation studio, Mushi Productions. Not counting an experimental art film, "Stories on a Street Corner", which was made in 1962, its first release was a weekly series based upon the series, Astro Boy, which made its debut on New Year's Day, 1963. By the end of 1963, there were three more television animation studios that began producing animations, and Toei Animation had opened a TV division. By the end of the 1960s, the popularity of TV science-fiction and action-adventure anime was so overwhelming that Toei began making fairy-tales.
Television animation became much more popular in Japan than it ever was in America (like it is now). This was mostly because of the influence Tezuka had on Japan. He had drawn in just about every medium that exists. He thought that cartoons were suitable for any age group; in the U.S., people thought that comic books were very juvenile. Tezuka brought sophisticated adult animation to movie theaters with his 1969 art feature, "A Thousand and One Nights". By the 1970s, TV studios such as TCJ (Television Corporation of Japan), Tatsunoko Production Co., Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), and Nippon Animation were creating a bunch of mysteries, older-teen stuff, and Western literary classics such as Heidi, The Diary of Anne Frank, and more.
There was a flood of toy-promos, featuring action-heroes for boys and "magical little girls" who could transform into older-teen heartthrobs for girls ("hot" guys!). One of the most influential animes was Toei's adaptation of comic-book artist, Go Nagai's "Mazinger Z". Mazinger Z and Nagai's direct sequels Great Mazinger and UFO Robot Grandizer ran for 222 weekly episodes from 1972 up to 1977. By the mid-1980s there had been over 40 different giant-robot anime series, covering almost every channel and every animation studio in Japan.
Closely related to these were the futuristic outer-space adventures, which began in 1974 with "Space Battleship Yamato". This was kind of like a remake of World War II, but instead, it took place in outer space. A series of Yamato TV-series and theatrical-feature sequels came out later. During the late 1970s and early 80s, the hottest cartoonist in anime was Yamato's successor, Leiji Matsumoto. He made TV cartoon series and theatrical features that were based upon his other space-adventure manga, such as Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999 and The Queen of 1,000 Years.
In the early 1980s, Miyazaki began a science-fiction comic-book adventure, "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (which is now on video and DVD). The 1984 Nausicaä was a smash success, which resulted in Tokuma founding a new animation studio, Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli has released an average of one feature per year since then. Some productions that they made include Miyazaki's Laputa: the Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and The Crimson Pig (1992); and Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), and Pom Poko (1994). Many of these became very popular, in Japan and in America. Takahata's Pom Poko was also submitted as Japan's candidate for being an Academy Award nominee for being the Best Foreign Film. Some other notable theatrical features during the past decade include writer and director Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk thriller Akira (1988) and director Mamoru Oshii's adaptation of Masamune Shirow's sci-fi manga novel, "Ghost in the Shell" (1995), which is now on Adult Swim (after Fullmetal Alchemist).
Original Anime Video
At the beginning of 1984, animation began to be produced a lot more, which resulted in the creation of OAVs (Original Anime Videos). OAV animation has better quality than the TV animations, but isn't as good as theatrical animation. Video productions can run from a 30 minutesup to 2 hours, and independent titles had a series of 2 to 10 videos. No Time for Tenchi and some other OAVs have become so popular that these were turned into their own anime TV series and theatrical films. There are anime-fan magazines that are devoted to only the anime video market, which lists an average of 40 to 45 new releases per month. One-third of the list are new OAVs. These OAV titles are the main source for the anime that is being released in America today.
Anime Today
Due to the sheer volume of the output over the past three decades, the good ideas have basically been used, but hopefully, some new ones will be on their way. The current trend is for OAV to make remakes of anime favorites that were made 20 or 30 years ago. But many of the titles and concepts that are stale in Japan are still fresh to American audiences, so anime in the U.S. is still going to grow a lot. There are also many places in which you can view anime, such as Adult Swim, Anime Network, and many other places.
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