Anime as we know it today is the product of more than 100 years of evolution in an industry loaded with works that pushed the limits of what can be described as cartoons.
To get to what it is today, mangakas, animators, filmmakers and studios went a long way in what would be an uphill battle and in which they were victorious, but how did this happen?
Let’s take a walk through the evolution of anime to discover all the details and moments that defined one of our favorite forms of entertainment, as time passes quickly before our eyes.
The origin of anime
When we talk about the origin of anime, it is important to clarify one thing and that is that although this name is specifically attributed to animation that comes from Japan, for them all cartoons are anime.
Hence, it is not something exclusive to the country of the rising sun, in fact, the origins of anime come from the imitation of animated shorts from the United States and France in 1900.
The first short known and distributed to the audience was ‘Namakura Gatana’ by Junichi Kouchi in 1917, which told the story of a dangerous samurai who bought a Katana with a damaged blade.
Because animation has always sought to imitate cinema, the short was released completely silent, so it did not seem attractive to an audience that already enjoyed the creations of Walt Disney Studio.
Although the problem of a disinterested audience is already quite complicated, to this was added that importing the animation was much cheaper than doing it at home, not to mention that it also had a better quality.
Wars pay well
To cover the costs, the studios and animators began to work on those shorts that had benefactors behind them, such as big brands and eventually political propaganda.
This era is quite striking because it coincides with the Second World War and what it was for the animation world to create animated shorts that would boost the morale of the soldiers.
In his quest to appeal to the Disney charm of the time while criticizing everything that had to do with American culture, he left behind animations that incite hatred and war with adorable characters with googly eyes.
La casa de Toei Doga
From here we have to take a leap of almost 25 years, since up to this point, although Japan continued to climb the ladder by adding audio to its animations and gradually improving the quality, it was not until 1937 that a great change occurred with the premiere of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Until then, the animations had been short and while some already had color, the strident palette offered by Disney was something revolutionary that showed that audiences could come to love cartoons.
Ōkawa Hiroshi, President of Toei Film, was so dazzled by the results of ‘Snow White’ that he began construction of his own animation studio Toei Doga, which we now know as Toei Animation.
From here the president begins to assemble a team of professionals who learned the techniques directly from employees of the mouse house, from whom they collected information in the United States or flew to Japan.
Thanks to this dynamic, the land of the rising sun gets the first full-color film, ‘Hakujaden’, a milestone in the industry that not only spoke of how far they had come, it also ignited the spark of the brightest minds in the world of the anime, like Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
Anime father’s flame
While Hiroshi managed to put together a studio that to this day enjoys great success, there is arguably someone greater inspired by Disney and that is Osamu Tezuka, the father of anime.
Tezuka created more than 700 original works in his career, but if there is one capable of exceeding his own creations in every way, that is ‘Astro Boy’ known for being the first animated series to reach TV in Japan.
The influence of Disney is so great for the author, that his most popular protagonist obtained one of the traits that largely define anime to the present day and it is the large eyes that give an adorable quality to the drawings.
With a futuristic theme, a character design that gave him as little joint movement as possible to cut costs, and the expression of a newborn Bambi, they launched him to stardom and changed everything we knew in 1963.
Time to put the pieces together
With foundations solidified over time, the 60s, 70s and 80s define the ramifications of anime, we began to make distinctions of themes and with these the tropes of each one.
These 30 years are defined by the separation between genres such as science fiction, mechas and spokon, but we also see how the division of the audience begins and the creation of specific content for various ages and genres.
While anime for young boys is rife with action and heavyweight battles depicted with dull colors and thick lines, it becomes a must for girls to evoke romance and drama in bold hues and soft strokes.
Although this does not mean that you could not enjoy both content, the division was clear and even at times a bit suffocating, so eventually these lines are erased and giving way to content that everyone can enjoy without distinction.
The rise of OVAs
Much of what helped to blur the self-imposed barriers we owe to OVAs (Original Video Animation), a crucial step for the industry that began as a simple experiment in the 1980s.
If you only know the actual meaning of an ova, which corresponds to the bonus or original content created mostly for DVD and Blu-ray sales of your favorite series, you will be a bit confused, but fear not.
In the past, these OVAs were about animes created as a way to push the limits of animation to the maximum while giving directors and animators free rein to create whatever they wanted.
Because the anime up to this point was based on already created stories, the OVAs provided a great respite for potential filmmakers and brought uncensored stories to life, as their distribution was exclusively for CDs.
Thanks to this exploration of animation, great works with nothing to support them reached TV, taking as an example what became the ‘Evangelion’ franchise and the experimental anime ‘Serial Experiments Lain’.
Big differences between yesterday and today
Just as 3 decades in the past can be coupled, with the end of the 90s and until today we can do the same, after all the evolution of anime at this point is about aesthetics and new tools.
We see this with great stories that have inspired all fields of anime, taking as an example ‘Sailor Moon’ and its most recent version ‘Sailor Moon Crystal’.
Although the story remains the same as it takes us into the lives of the star warriors, the greatest impact comes from the aesthetic aspect changing the voluminous hairstyles, the thick contours, marked facial features and the dull colors for straight hair, angelic faces and bright displays. color.
This is as true for the reboots as it is for the continuations and we see it in animes like ‘Pokémon’ or ‘One Piece’, which thanks to the fact that they have remained in transmission, the jumps in the animation can be appreciated.
The use of tools such as CGI to obtain more realistic backgrounds or generate special effects allows anime to continue to evolve, take new forms, create new genres and most importantly: it allowed its globalization.
Today more than ever the Western public has ways of interacting with anime and its creators, of legally consuming much of the content and this is where a new story will surely be written.
With the world now as a consumer, it will be interesting to closely follow the evolution of something that began as an imitation, to become a form of entertainment that draws millions of people.
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