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History of Anime Sandbox YAY

The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1912. Before the advent of film, Japan already had a rich tradition of entertainment with colourful painted figures moving across the projection screen in utsushi-e (写し絵), a particular Japanese type of magic lantern show popular in the 19th century. Possibly inspired by European phantasmagoria shows, utsushi-e showmen used mechanical slides and developed lightweight wooden projectors (furo) that were handheld so that several performers could each control the motions of different projected figures.

The second generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Jun'ichi Kōuchi and Seitarō Kitayama, commonly referred to as the "fathers" of anime. Propaganda films, such as Momotarō no Umiwashi (1943) and Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (1945), the latter being the first anime feature film, were made during World War II. During the 1970s, anime developed further, with the inspiration of Disney animators, separating itself from its Western roots, and developing distinct genres such as mecha and its super robot subgenre. Typical shows from this period include Astro Boy, Lupin III and Mazinger Z. During this period several filmmakers became famous, especially Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii.

In the 1980s, anime became mainstream in Japan, experiencing a boom in production with the rise in popularity of anime like Gundam, Macross, Dragon Ball, and genres such as real robot, space opera and cyberpunk. Space Battleship Yamato and Super Dimension Fortress Macross also achieved worldwide success after being adapted respectively as Star Blazers and Robotech. Around this time, especially in the U.S. anime exploded in popularity becoming mainstream through scholars in media studies, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology.

The 1988 film Akira went on to become an international success. Later, in 2004, the same creators produced Steamboy, which became the most expensive anime film. Spirited Away shared the first prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, while Innocence: Ghost in the Shell was featured at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Precursors[edit]

Before film, Japan had already several forms of entertainment based in storytelling and images. Emakimono and kagee are considered precursors of Japanese animation. Emakimono was common in the eleventh century. Traveling storytellers narrated legends and anecdotes while the emakimono was unrolled from the right to left with chronological order, as a moving panorama. Kagee was popular during the Edo period and originated from the shadows play of China. Magic lanterns from the Netherlands were also popular in the eighteenth century. The paper play called Kamishibai surged in the twelfth century and remained popular in the street theater until the 1930s. Puppets of the bunraku theater and ukiyo-e prints are considered ancestors of characters of most Japanese animations. Finally, manga were a heavy inspiration for Japanese animation. Cartoonists Kitazawa Rakuten and Okamoto Ippei used film elements in their strips in the early 20th century.

During the Second World War[edit]

See also: List of anime by release date (1939–1945)

In the 1930s, the Japanese government began enforcing cultural nationalism. This also lead to strict censorship and control of published media. Many animators were urged to produce animations that enforced the Japanese spirit and national affiliation. Some movies were shown in newsreel theatres, especially after the Film Law of 1939 promoted documentary and other educational films. Such support helped boost the industry, as bigger companies formed through mergers and prompted major live-action studios such as Shochiku to begin producing animation. It was at Shochiku that such masterworks as Kenzō Masaoka's Kumo to Chūrippu were produced. Wartime reorganization of the industry, however, merged the feature film studios into three big companies.

During the Second World War, more animated films were commissioned by the Imperial Japanese Army, showing the sly, quick Japanese people winning against enemy forces. This included films such as Maysuyo Seo's Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (Momotaro: Sacred Sailors) (1943) which focused on the Japanese occupation of Asia.

1960s[edit]

In the 1960s, the unique style of Japanese anime began forming, with large eyed, big mouthed, and large headed characters. The first anime film to be broadcast was Moving pictures in 1960. 1961 saw the premiere of Japan's first animated television series, Instant History, although it did not consist entirely of animation. Magic Boy, known in Japan as Shōnen Sarutobi Sasuke (少年猿飛佐助, "The Boy Sarutobi Sasuke"), is a 1959 Japanese animated feature film released on December 25, 1959. Released as Toei Animation's second theatrical anime, the film was released in theaters in United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on June 22, 1961, making it the first anime film to be released in the country, followed by Panda and the Magic Serpent on July 8, 1961. These films were popular enough they paved the way for other anime to follow. Astro Boy, created by Osamu Tezuka, premiered on Fuji TV on January 1, 1963. It became the first anime series shown widely to Western audiences, especially to those in the United States, becoming relatively popular and influencing U.S. popular culture, with American companies acquiring various titles from Japanese producers. Astro Boy was highly influential to other anime in the 1960s, and was followed by a large number of anime about robots or space. While Tezuka released many other animated shows, like Kimba the White Lion (based on his own manga), anime took off, studios saw it as a commercial success. These early agreements made between producers in the U.S. and Japan promised the spread of animation to other places around the globe.

1963 introduced Sennin Buraku as the first "late night" anime and Toei Doga's first anime television series Wolf Boy Ken. Mushi Pro continued to produce more anime television and met success with titles such as Kimba the White Lion in 1965. What is noted as the first magical girl anime, Sally the Witch, began broadcasting in 1966. The original Speed Racer anime television began in 1967 and was brought to the West with great success. At the same time, an anime adaptation of Tezuka's Princess Knight aired, making it one of very few shoujo anime of the decade. The first anime adaptation of Shotaro Ishinomori's manga Cyborg 009 was created in 1968, following the film adaptation two years prior. 1969's "Attack no.1", the first shoujo sports anime was one of the first to have success in Japanese primetime and was also popular throughout Europe, particularly in Germany under the name "Mila Superstar."

The long-running Sazae-san anime also began in 1969 and continues today with excess of 6,500 episodes broadcast as of 2014. With an audience share of 25% the series is still the most-popular anime broadcast.

1970s[edit]

During the 1970s, the Japanese film market shrank due to competition from television. This reduced Toei animation's staff and many animators went to studios such as A Pro and Telecom animation. Mushi Production went bankrupt (though the studio was revived 4 years later), its former employees founding studios such as Madhouse and Sunrise. Many young animators were thrust into the position of director, and the injection of young talent allowed for a wide variety of experimentation. One of the earliest successful television productions in the early 1970s was Tomorrow's Joe (1970), a boxing anime which has become iconic in Japan. 1971 saw the first installment of the Lupin III anime. Contrary to the franchise's current popularity, the first series ran for 23 episodes before being cancelled. The second series (starting in 1977) saw considerably more success, spanning 155 episodes over three years.

Another example of this experimentation is Isao Takahata's 1974 television series Heidi, Girl of the Alps. This show was originally a hard sell because it was a simple realistic drama aimed at children, and most TV networks thought children needed something more fantastic to draw them in. Heidi was an international success, popular in many European countries, and so successful in Japan that it allowed for Hayao Miyazaki and Takahata to start a series of literary-based anime (World Masterpiece Theater). Miyazaki and Takahata left Nippon Animation in the late 1970s. Two of Miyazaki's critically acclaimed productions during the 1970s were Future Boy Conan (1978) and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979).

During this period, Japanese animation reached continental Europe with productions aimed at European and Japanese children, with the most-pronounced examples being the aforementioned Heidi but also Barbapapa and Vicky the Viking. Specifically, anime and manga found receptive audiences in Italy, Germany, and France; East and Southeast Asia; and throughout Latin America. Each country's interest increased in Japan's output, which was offered for a low price. In the 1970s, censored Japanese animation were shown on U.S. television. One example of this censorship was transgender characters in Gatchaman ("Battle of the Planets").

Another genre known as mecha came into being at this time. Some early works include Mazinger Z (1972–1974), Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972–1974), Space Battleship Yamato (1974–75) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–80).

As a contrast to the action-oriented shows, shows for a female audience such as Candy Candy and The Rose of Versailles earned high popularity on Japanese television and later in other parts of the world.

By 1978, over fifty shows were aired on television.

1980s[edit]

In the 1980s, anime started to go through a "visual quality renewal" thanks to new directors like Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, who founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, and Katsuhiro Ōtomo. Anime began to deal with more nuanced and complex stories, while Boy's Love continued to impact cultural norms, taking root across East Asia, as countries such as South Korea, Thailand, and China ingested these Japanese pop culture exports. The shift towards space operas became more pronounced with the commercial success of Star Wars (1977). The science fiction genre as a whole had a strong influence on Japanese animation, shaping its creative direction. This allowed for the space opera Space Battleship Yamato (1974) to be revived as a theatrical film. Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) was also successful and revived as a theatrical film in 1982. The success of the theatrical versions of Yamato and Gundam is seen as the beginning of the anime boom of the 1980s, and of "Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age".

A subculture in Japan, whose members later called themselves otaku, began to develop around animation magazines such as Animage and Newtype. These magazines formed in response to the overwhelming fandom that developed around shows such as Yamato and Gundam in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Gatchaman was reworked and edited into Battle of the Planets in 1978 and again as G-Force in 1986. Space Battleship Yamato was reworked and edited into Star Blazers in 1979. The Macross series began with The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982), which was adapted into English as the first arc of Robotech (1985), which was created from three separate anime titles: The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada. The sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985), became the most successful real robot space opera in Japan, where it managed an average television rating of 6.6% and a peak of 11.7%.

The otaku subculture became more pronounced with Mamoru Oshii's adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi's popular manga Urusei Yatsura (1981). Yatsura made Takahashi a household name and Oshii would break away from fan culture and take a more auteuristic approach with his 1984 film Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. This break with the otaku subculture would allow Oshii to experiment further.

The otaku subculture had some effect on people who were entering the industry around this time. The most famous of these people were the amateur production group Daicon Films which would become Gainax. Gainax began by making films for the Daicon science fiction conventions and were so popular in the otaku community that they were given a chance to helm the biggest-budgeted anime film (at that time), Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987).

One of the most-influential anime of all time, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), was made during this period. The film gave extra prestige to anime allowing for many experimental and ambitious projects to be funded shortly after its release. It also allowed director Hayao Miyazaki and his longtime colleague Isao Takahata to create their own studio under the supervision of former Animage editor Toshio Suzuki. This studio would become known as Studio Ghibli and its first film was Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), one of Miyazaki's most-ambitious films.

The success of Dragon Ball (1986) introduced the martial arts genre and became incredibly influential in the Japanese Animation industry. It influenced many more martial arts anime and manga series' including Hajime no Ippo (1989), Baki the Grappler (1991), Naruto (2002), and The God of Highschool (2020).

The 1980s brought anime to the home video market in the form of original video animation (OVA), as shows were shifting from a focus on superheroes to robots and space operas, with original video animation (OVA or OAV) coming onto the market in 1984, with a range in length. Home videos opened up the floodgates, introducing viewers, especially those in the West, to anime films. Although anime was widely distributed through international piracy in the 1980s and 1990s, before the days of online piracy, it continued to survive. Anime recovered in the U.S., becoming more of Japan's television exports as the country became the "world's leading authority" in entertainment. The first OVA was Mamoru Oshii's Dallos (1983–1984). Shows such as Patlabor had their beginnings in this market and it proved to be a way to test less-marketable animation against audiences. The OVA allowed for the release of pornographic anime such as Cream Lemon (1984); the first hentai OVA was actually the little-known Wonder Kids studio's Lolita Anime, also released in 1984.

The 1980s also saw the amalgamation of anime with video games. The airing of Red Photon Zillion (1987) and subsequent release of its companion game, is considered to have been a marketing ploy by Sega to promote sales of their newly released Master System in Japan.

Sports anime, as it is now known, made its debut in 1983 with an anime adaptation of Yoichi Takahashi's soccer manga Captain Tsubasa, which became the first worldwide successful sports anime. Its themes and stories were a formula that would be used in many sports series that followed, such as Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield 21.

The late 1980s saw an increasing number of high-budget and experimental films. In 1985, Toshio Suzuki helped put together funding for Oshii's experimental film Angel's Egg (1985). Theatrical releases became more ambitious, each film trying to outclass or outspend its predecessors, taking cues from Nausicaä's popular and critical success. Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985), Tale of Genji (1986), and Grave of the Fireflies (1988) were all ambitious films based on important literary works in Japan. Films such as Char's Counterattack (1988) and Arion (1986) were lavishly budgeted spectacles. This period of lavish budgeting and experimentation would reach its zenith with one of the most-expensive anime film productions ever: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987). Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) was the top-grossing film for 1989, earning over $40 million at the box office.

Despite the commercial failure of Akira (1988) in Japan, it brought with it a much larger international fan base for anime. When shown overseas, the film became a cult hit and, eventually, a symbol of the medium for the West. The domestic failure and international success of Akira, combined with the bursting of the bubble economy and Osamu Tezuka's death in 1989, marked the end of the 1980s era of anime.

Postwar environment[edit]

In the post-war years, Japanese media was often influenced by the United States, leading some to define anime as any animation emanating from Japan after 1945. In fact, the term itself became more and more common around this time period. While anime and manga began to flourish in the 1940s and 1950s, with foreign films (and layouts by American cartoonists), influencing people such as Osamu Tezuka,

In the 1950s, anime studios began appearing across Japan. Hiroshi Takahata bought a studio named Japan Animated Films in 1948, renaming it Tōei Dōga, with an ambition to become "the Disney of the East." While there, Takahata met other animators such as Yasuji Mori, who directed Doodling Kitty, in May 1957. However, for the Japanese public, it wasn't until the release of Panda and the Magic Serpent in October 1958 that Japan fully entered into world of professional animation. While animators began to experiment with their own styles, using Western techniques, Tezuka Osamu began drawing shonen manga like Rob no Kishi (Knight of the Ribbon), which later became Princess Knight, trying to appeal to female readers, while also pioneering shoujo manga.