Brief History of Anime

Anime began all the way back in 1917 and were referred to as “Manga Films'' and were
short, silent, clips of animation. As the animation industry began to grow, the japanese were
out-shined by companies like Disney so the entire industry had to restart from scratch. After
years of trying to get back on their feet a man named Kenzo Masaoka started to rise in the
industry. He created the first anime with audio, ​Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka (Within the
World of Power and Women), i​ n ​1933​. These anime were made with a thing called cels; a
transparent sheet of which were drawn and painted on and used for traditional hand drawn
animation. Putting layers of these cels atop one another would create scenery. Many movies
and animations used cels, such as snow white and pinocchio, but this process was nowhere
near cheap. Many animation studios needed to do large advertising and promotional videos to
get even close to the amount of money needed.
In 1945 the first japanese animated film was released, ​Momotaro: Umi no Shinpei
(Momotaro, Sacred Sailors)​, which was produced and released by Shochiku. This movie forever
changed a young manga artist, Osamu Tezuka, who wanted to branch out and make his own
series an anime. In 1958 himself and Toei, another large animation/film company like Shochiku,
began to animate his ever so popular series Boku no Son Goku or Son-Goku the Monkey King.
As they worked together on this series they realized that they weren’t the best match for each
other so Tezuka took some of Toei’s best animators and made his own company, Mushi
Production or Mushi Pro for short. This company, although lesser known than most, has some
of the best animators and more likely or not you have seen in the corner of your eye one of the
works of these great animators.
In the 60’s things finally started to warm up to how we know anime today thanks to the
introduction of television. On tv they originally only showed shows that now we would just
consider clips, for example​ Otogi Manga Calendar​ where they would say what happened in
history on that day, on average being three minutes long. The first 25 minute standard anime
that came out was ​Astro Boy. ​Making a lengthy anime was a terrifying thought for most
animators because of the cost and the amount of time it would take to make but to Tezuka and
Mushi Pro it seemed like an obtainable goal. Since Astro Boy was originally a manga (as most
animes are) they did not need time to create a whole story line or even imagine new scenes.
They also reduced the fps(frames per second) and started reusing cels to minimize the amount
of animation needed for each part. This anime was a huge success, falling into the hearts of
Japanese and American citizens alike. Astro boy started the wave of non-serious, 25 minute
long, anime series. Other popular series during the 1960’s were ​Jungle Emperor (Kimba the
White Lion)​ which was the first colored animated anime to air on public television and​ Tetsujin
28-Go​ which was the first shojo anime (Anime aim towards 6 to 15 year olds, typically some sort
of magical girl anime). The 70’s were also right around the corner, and anime just kept
increasing in popularity. New anime such as ​Mobile Suit Gunndam​ and D ​ oraemon ​were
released gaining popularity through merch and famous companies.
Once the 80’s came anime entered its first golden age. A variety of anime genres came
out such as sports and sci-fi along with the addition of having VHS tapes, anime was at its peak
of popularity. Animes such as ​Captain Subasa, Urusei Yatsura​, and ​Golgo 13 ​were hitting the
shelves. Along with this, OVA’s(Original video animations) were soon to follow. These were
basically episodes that never aired on tv, you had to buy the VHS or CD to watch them. These
grew immensely popular allowing animations companies a larger budget for newer anime. One
of the most notable anime that had a huge budget increase was ​Akira​, which used expensive
voice acting techniques and moved at 24 fps instead of the standard 8. This anime hit huge and
became one of the most talked about animes during its time, but all good things must come to
an end and with Akira the anime golden age ended with a bang.
There was a crash in the Japanese stock market in 1990, which indefinitely put a huge
strain on animation companies. Many companies had to close down, and the ones that stayed
open didn’t have the budget for OVA’s anymore, but some companies decided to keep pushing
strong. During the 90’s Studio Ghibli came out with many of its famous anime movies such as
Kiki’s Delivery Service(My personal favorite), Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro.​ The
90’s was a time for all of the iconic anime to reveal themselves such as; ​Pokemon: Indigo
League, Sailor Moon, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. ​Evangelion standardized some standard
anime tropes such as the tsundere, a character who initially acts cold but warms up later, and
moe, a character that acts cute and “baby-like” that makes you want to shower them with love
and protection. Although not created by Evangelion, it would make these personalities even
more popular in anime later down the road and even becoming big money makers.
As the 2000’s neared anime was able to pick itself back up again with a new twist, digital
art and animation. Since the beginning of anime companies were using cels to animate and
create anime, but now with computers entering a new age so was anime. Not only was anime
growing in the 2000’s, the community was growing as well. Anime conventions (cons) were
being held more and more often with more and more people attending. At cons people buy and
sell fan merchandise, whether it be official or not, meet people to have a good time with,
cosplay, enter contests, and go to panels where loved va (voice actors), animators, bands, and
pretty much any other person related to anime that you can think of come to talk and give fans a
deeper insight into the anime that they love. The 2000’s reawakened anime from the 1990
slump. Releasing in the 2000’s animes like ​Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach​ which all became
long running household names. Along with the new advances in animation on a computer the
sales department came up with a new idea, the ONA or, the Original Net Anime where just like
an OVA was limited to the cd an ONA was limited to the internet. People were going nuts, there
were many options to choose from maybe even ​too many?
From 1999 to 2006 there was an average of 160 new titles a year but by 2008 dropped
to only about 100 because companies weren’t getting enough sales to be giving such a wide
variety of animes to choose from ,so in a sales pitch creators began to come out with light
novels that could later be turned into an anime. The prime example of this is ​the Melancholy of
Haruhi Suzumiya​ which popularized this trend to the point where light novels are still going
strong. Also in other attempts to get sales to rise again companies began to remaster old
animes with the new digital animation such as ​Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Hunter X
Hunter, and Dragon Ball Z: Kai​ which all happened to come out in 2011.
Anime is still growing and changing steadily everyday and nobody has any clue what is
going to happen next. Everything and everyone is always evolving so the future is holding what
it wants but one thing that is a guarantee is that anime is 100% part of that future!