The History of Manga and Anime
The history of anime and manga is an interesting story if you are a fan of these Japanese cartoons.
Here is a brief guide to the past of Manga and Japanmiation.
Japanese manga and anime is not a new idea. People are only starting to become aware of it here in the UK , but over in Japan they've been watching it for years.
Anime is the moving form of Manga which has been around since the Buddhist monks of the 19th century. These were of many forms and were often only one picture.People then started linking pictures to tell a story. This was the beginning of manga and took off at around the same time as American comics. They flourished during the1920's.
People began to created full stories out of these pictures and features many themes including history and romance.
In the 1940's Japan was still quite poor so their film industry wasn't really strong. Instead these comics became more and more popular.
At around this time, the man who many hail as the grand-daddy of manga and anime, Osamu Tezuka took these short tales and interwound them to create long saga stories in much the same format as popular American comics.
He found that he was able to create a style that was very popular and took off due to good art as well as good stories. He was the first person to draw comics that would have great action scenes that overlapped into the next panel which is now a commonly used technique.
Some say that he drew influences from the style that felt right to him and also Max Fleischer and Disney animation of the time.
From the 1950's onwards the children who had been reading these comics were growing up but still continued to read these manga books. This is how adults came to read manga. The industry moved forwards and came to target these adults when selling comics. This is how the trend of manga with a strong sexual nature or violence and gore came about. The children's comics of course were still being made and therefore the market expanded and expanded.
Nowadays there are manga comics of every genre. You'll find action stories, school comedies, space sagas and romantic tales, all in the manga format.
Here in the UK we think, "If it isn't the Beano or an American superhero comic, what kind of comic is it all about?" Japanese comics have their own style and cover different genres and that's why they rock, you see.
As said by Martin Wong and Eric Nakamura, the two editors of Japan 's popular "Giant Robot" Magazine once said,
"You can get manga aimed at males some are aimed at females, they are divided up that way, but also you've got ones for kids, ones for adults and ones for perverts so it's divided up that way too."
"All of these topics that you would think aren't popular, but everybody reads them."
I think that that sums up why manga comics have such wide ranging appeal. On the Japanese subway you will find men and women of ages 6 to 60 will be reading their favourite manga on the way to work or school.
So that's the low-down on manga but what about anime?
Well most fans will agree that the first proper anime was Osamu Tezuka's "Astro Boy" which was a massive success. He risked his career to put together a production studio to create animated TV shows.
He created the first black and white TV animation in 1963, and this was the beginning of what we know now as anime. He followed what has become a benchmark in anime history very quickly with a full-colour production called "Kimba-The White Lion"
Although anime expanded and continued to do so, budgets for this type of programming was tight and animators had to cut corners. That's why old anime seems cheap, but I assure you, if you look past the dodgy animation it's mostly 24-carat gold.
So that's a very brief history of Manga and Anime and how they evolved over the years.
I hope you have found it to be an interesting read and perhaps even useful.
Dr Placebo
