CARTOONS

 

a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, especially a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine

a motion picture using animation techniques to photograph a sequence of drawings rather than real people or objects.

 

The History of Cartoons

Cartoons have had a long and storied history. When people think of cartoons, they may think of comic books, political cartoons and Saturday morning’s when they were kids. But cartoons have been around in print and visual media for several hundred years.
Some of the earliest cartoons go back to the 18^th Century Britain, where cartoons would appear satirizing famous people of the day. These early political cartoons soon came to colonial America, and became an important part of the movement for independence. The early political cartoons in the colonies poked fun at British rule and the laws of the day. The political cartoons in the newspapers of the day helped provide a central theme for the growing revolutionary spirit.
From the start, cartoons have been a way to lampoon and poke fun at the establishment and government. However, over time cartoons moved from newspapers to other formats. In 1841, Punch Magazine debuts featuring satirical articles and cartoons. The format that Punch utilized became the basis of future satirical magazines such as Mad and Spy.
Cartoons have also been used as images to promote certain ideals. One of the most famous is Uncle Sam. In 1852, the likeness of Uncle Sam began to appear in a cartoon in a New York newspaper. Soon, the image of Uncle Sam became to be tied to the United States and Uncle Sam began to appear in advertisements to support the country during times of war and strife.
When the motion picture was invented in the early 1900’s, one of the earliest uses of this new medium was the cartoon. Now famous cartoons could be brought to action on the big screen. Patrons of movies were thrilled to see some of the cartoon shorts that would begin to appear. The cartoons of the movies were a fixture for many years and through the work of the Disney Studios in the late 1900’s and the continued work of animation studios such as Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks Studios have advanced the genre of animated cartoon movies to new heights.
While cartoons in the movies and in print have been a part of our lives, the area that has seen the greatest advancement of the genre is the work of television cartoons. Cartoons have been a part of television since the early days of TV in the mid 1900’s. Over the course of time cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse and other early TV cartoon pioneers have been part of our life. In time, cartoons such as The Flintstones, Jetsons and Scooby Doo began to appear followed by animated superheroes such as Batman, Superman and Spiderman. Today, television cartoons continue to appear including those that are not just for kids, such as The Simpsons, South Park and The Family Guy.
Cartoons has had a long history and even played an important role in the history of the country. It has been in print and video format, and continues to evolve into an important part of our everyday lives.

Manhwa 

 

is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons (common usage also includes animated cartoons). Outside of Korea, the term usually refers specifically to South Korean comics.

 

What is Manhwa?

Manhwa is the term given to the korean comic-style, however more recently has been adopted to become a term for the South Korean comic books.

The Difference Between Manga and Manhwa

Although manhwa and manga share many similarities, it is often easy to distinguish between them. Some of the main differences are as follows:
–Manhwa books mostly read from left to right.
–The manhwa art style tends to put more emphasis on the eyes and face of characters.
–Character’s figures tend to have more realistic proportions.
–There is often a more frequent use of gradient “screen tone”.

An example of the manhwa art style, notice the emphasis on facial features, especially the eyes and lips.

A (very) Brief History of Manhwa.

The rise of the Korean manhwa industry has often been criticized as an attempt to follow the success of Japanese manga, however this is not entirely true, and manhwa have a distinct history of their own.
Manhwa’s modern origins are mainly political in nature, dating from the pre-war newspaper comics, criticizing and satirising the Japanese, who went on to occupy Korea in 1910. The manwha continued to portray anti-Japanese sentiments during this occupation, criticizing the administration’s treatment of the public, and calling for liberation.
After attempts to uproot Korean culture in the 1930s, manhwa was driven to more varied forms, often humorous, until the early 1940s. The Japanese authorities recognized manwha’s potential as a tool of propaganda, and adopted it to promote and justify Japanese rule, whilst encouraging people to enlist, with stories that glorified imperial Japan, and the ongoing war.
On August 15th 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender, leaving the Korean peninsula under the control of allied forces. The country was split in two, with the Soviet Union governing the North, and the United States the South. It was the United States that went on to revive use of manwha as propaganda once more, using it to promote anti-communist ideals across the nation, particularly during the Korean civil war (1950-53). Other war time manwha consisted of more emotional stories, that captured the pain and suffering caused by the conflict.
It was the 1960s that brought about manwha’s rise in pop culture. With the birth of “Manwhabangs” (Comic rooms, allowing people to read new releases for a small fee), manwha began to become more versatile, with many exploring sci-fi fantasy elements, whilst “Myongrang manhwa” (jolly comics), bore the brunt of public interest.
However, a military coup which brought Park Chung-hee to power in 1961 saw strict censorship take its toll on the industry. Rules prevented artists from drawing characters with mini-skirts, ribbons or any accessories that were viewed as showing extravagance, and it was viewed as “improper” for a boy and a girl to appear together in a single cut.

The mischievous dinosaur, Dooly, became the first manhwa character to appear on a stamp in 1995.

With Park Chung-hee’s assassination in 1979, the censorship laws were relaxed, and more artistic freedom was allowed, 80s creation, “Dooly” the mischievous time-travelling dinosaur being a prime example (although the artist later admitted that Dooly was only a dinosaur as censors refused to publish a child disobeying adults!). Over time, censorship became more and more relaxed, and the 90s progressed through romance to stories that expressed more daring themes such as feminism, transsexualism and homosexuality. By the the late 90s, the true potential of manhwa was seen by the Kim Dae-jung administration, perhaps noticing the international potential through the popularity of manga, which saw the creation of government agencies to promote the industry.
The rise of the manhwa has been relatively unnoticed in the western world, whilst many popular manhwa exist, they are generally mistaken for their Japanese counterparts, or credited as imitations and attempts to infringe on their neighbour’s culture.
However, there has been a significant increase in manwha titles available in Europe in recent years, with a number of top American publishers (such as Dark Horse comics and Yen Press), adopting their own list of manhwa titles.
But it’s not just the West that is affected by manhwa, with its popularity in Asia leading to many successful live action film and TV adaptations, and spawning a number of successful video games.

 

 Manga

 

a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as well as children. 

 

History of manga

(wikipedia)

The history of manga is said to originate from scrolls dating back to the 12th century; however, whether these scrolls are actually manga is still disputed, though it's believed they represent the basis for the right-to-left reading style. Other authors report origins closer to the 18th century. Manga is a Japanese term that can be translated as "comic"; Historians and writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. Their views differ in the relative importance they attribute to the role of cultural and historical events following World War II versus the role of pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji Japanese culture and art.
One view emphasizes events occurring during and after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses that manga was strongly shaped by United States cultural influences, including US comics brought to Japan by the GIs and by images and themes from US television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney).^[1][2] The other view, represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art.^[3][4][5][6] According to Sharon Kinsella, the booming Japanese publishing industry helped create a consumer-oriented society in which publishing giants like Kodansha could shape popular taste.^[1]

Before World War II

Writers such as Takashi Murakami have stressed events after WWII, but Murakami sees Japan's defeat and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having created long-lasting scars on the Japanese artistic psyche, which, in this view, lost its previously virile confidence in itself and sought solace in harmless and cute (kawaii) images.^[7] However, Takayumi Tatsumi sees a special role for a transpacific economic and cultural transnationalism that created a postmodern and shared international youth culture of cartooning, film, television, music, and related popular arts, which was, for Tatsumi the crucible in which modern manga have developed.^[8]
For Murakami and Tatsumi, trans-nationalism (or globalization) refers specifically to the flow of cultural and subcultural material from one nation to another.^[7][8] In their usage, the term does not refer to international corporate expansion, nor to international tourism, nor to cross-border international personal friendships, but to ways in which artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions influence each other across national boundaries.^[7][8] An example of cultural trans-nationalism is the creation of Star Wars films in the US, their transformation into manga by Japanese artists, and the marketing of Star Wars manga to the US.^[9] Another example is the transfer of hip-hop culture from the US to Japan.^[10] Wong also sees a major role for trans-nationalism in the recent history of manga.^[11]

However, other writers stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions as central to the history of manga. They include Frederik L. Schodt,^[2][12] Kinko Ito,^[4] Adam L. Kern,^[13][14] and Eric Peter Nash.^[15] Schodt points to the existence in the 13th century of illustrated picture scrolls like Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga that told stories in sequential images with humor and wit.^[2] Schodt also stresses continuities of aesthetic style and vision between ukiyo-e and shunga woodblock prints and modern manga (all three fulfill Eisner's criteria for sequential art).^[16] While there are disputes over whether Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga or Shigisan-engi was the first manga, both scrolls date back to about the same time period. However others like Isao Takahata, Studio Ghibli co-founder and director, contends there is no linkage with the scrolls and modern manga.^[17]
Schodt and Nash also see a particularly significant role for kamishibai, a form of street theater where itinerant artists displayed pictures in a light box while narrating the story to audiences in the street.^[2][15] Torrance has pointed to similarities between modern manga and the Osaka popular novel between the 1890s and 1940, and argues that the development of widespread literacy in Meiji and post-Meiji Japan helped create audiences for stories told in words and pictures.^[18] Kinko Ito also roots manga historically in aesthetic continuity with pre-Meiji art, but she sees its post-WWII history as driven in part by consumer enthusiasm for the rich imagery and narrative of the newly developing manga tradition. Ito describes how this tradition has steadily produced new genres and markets, e.g., for girls' (shōjo) manga in the late 1960s and for Ladies Comics (redisu) in the 1980s.^[4]
Kern has suggested that kibyoshi, picture books from the late 18th century, may have been the world's first comic books.^[13] These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes.^[13] Although Kern does not believe that kibyoshi were a direct forerunner of manga, for Kern the existence of kibyoshi nonetheless points to a Japanese willingness to mix words and pictures in a popular story-telling medium.^[14] The first recorded use of the term "manga" to mean "whimsical or impromptu pictures" comes from this tradition in 1798, which, Kern points out, predates Katsushika Hokusai's better known Hokusai Manga usage by several decades.^[19][20]
Similarly, Inoue sees manga as being a mixture of image- and word-centered elements, each pre-dating the Allied occupation of Japan. In his view, Japanese image-centered or "pictocentric" art ultimately derives from Japan's long history of engagement with Chinese graphic art,^{[citation needed]} whereas word-centered or "logocentric" art, like the novel, was stimulated by social and economic needs of Meiji and pre-war Japanese nationalism for a populace unified by a common written language. Both fuse in what Inoue sees as a symbiosis in manga.^[21]
The roots of the wide-eyed look commonly associated with manga dates back to shōjo magazine illustrations during the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The most important illustrators associated with this style at the time were Yumeji Takehisa and particularly Jun'ichi Nakahara, who, influenced by his work as a doll creator, frequently drew female characters with big eyes in the early 20th century. This had a significant influence on early manga, particularly shōjo manga, evident in the work of influential manga artists such as Makoto Takahashi and Riyoko Ikeda.^[22]
Thus, these scholars see the history of manga as involving historical continuities and discontinuities between the aesthetic and cultural past as it interacts with post-WWII innovation and trans-nationalism.

After World War II

Modern manga originates in the occupation (1945–1952) and post-occupation years (1952-early 1960s), when a previously militaristic and ultranationalist Japan was rebuilding its political and economic infrastructure.^{[2][Note 1]} Although Allied occupation censorship policies specifically prohibited art and writing that glorified war and Japanese militarism,^[2] those policies did not prevent the publication of other kinds of material, including manga. Furthermore, the 1947 Japanese Constitution (Article 21) prohibited all forms of censorship.^[23] One result was the growth of artistic creativity in this period.^[2]

                                                    

In the forefront of this period are two manga series and characters that influenced much of the future history of manga. These are Osamu Tezuka's Mighty Atom (Astro Boy in the United States; begun in 1951) and Machiko Hasegawa's Sazae-san (begun in 1946).
Astro Boy was both a superpowered robot and a naive little boy.^[24] Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience nor what kind of robot programming could make him so deeply affiliative.^[24] Both seem innate to Astro Boy, and represent a Japanese sociality and community-oriented masculinity differing very much from the Emperor-worship and militaristic obedience enforced during the previous period of Japanese imperialism.^[24] Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere as an icon and hero of a new world of peace and the renunciation of war, as also seen in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.^[23][24] Similar themes occur in Tezuka's New World and Metropolis.^[2][24]
By contrast, Sazae-san (meaning "Ms. Sazae") was drawn starting in 1946 by Machiko Hasegawa, a young woman artist who made her heroine a stand-in for millions of Japanese men and especially women rendered homeless by the war.^[2][25] Sazae-san does not face an easy or simple life, but, like Astro Boy, she too is highly affiliative and is deeply involved with her immediate and extended family. She is also a very strong character, in striking contrast to the officially sanctioned Neo-Confucianist principles of feminine meekness and obedience to the "good wife, wise mother" (ryōsai kenbo, りょうさいけんぼ; 良妻賢母) ideal taught by the previous military regime.^[26][27][28] Sazae-san faces the world with cheerful resilience,^[25][29] what Hayao Kawai calls a "woman of endurance."^[30] Sazae-san sold more than 62 million copies over the next half century.^[31]
Tezuka and Hasegawa were also both stylistic innovators. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots.^[2] More critically, Tezuka synchronised the placement of panel with the reader's viewing speed to simulate moving pictures. Hence in manga production as in film production, the person who decide the allocation of panels (Komawari) is credited as the author while most drawing are done by assistants. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.^[2] Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga.^[25][29][32]
Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.^[2][33] Up to 1969, shōjo manga was drawn primarily by adult men for young female readers.^[2][34]
Two very popular and influential male-authored manga for girls from this period were Tezuka's 1953-1956 Ribon no Kishi (Princess Knight or Knight in Ribbons) and Mitsuteru Yokoyama 1966 Mahōtsukai Sarii (Little Witch Sally).^[2] Ribon no Kishi dealt with the adventures of Princess Sapphire of a fantasy kingdom who had been born with male and female souls, and whose sword-swinging battles and romances blurred the boundaries of otherwise rigid gender roles.^[2] Sarii, the pre-teen princess heroine of Mahōtsukai Sarii,^{[Note 2]} came from her home in the magical lands to live on Earth, go to school, and perform a variety of magical good deeds for her friends and schoolmates.^[35] Yokoyama's Mahōtsukai Sarii was influenced by the US TV sitcom Bewitched,^[36] but unlike Samantha, the main character of Bewitched, a married woman with her own daughter, Sarii is a pre-teenager who faces the problems of growing up and mastering the responsibilities of forthcoming adulthood. Mahōtsukai Sarii helped create the now very popular mahō shōjo or "magical girl" subgenre of later manga.^[35] Both series were and still are very popular.^[2][35]

Shōjo manga

In 1969, a group of women manga artists later called the Year 24 Group (also known as Magnificent 24s) made their shōjo manga debut (year 24 comes from the Japanese name for 1949, when many of these artists were born).^[37][38] The group included Hagio Moto, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Oshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi^[25] and they marked the first major entry of women artists into manga.^[2][25] Thereafter, shōjo manga would be drawn primarily by women artists for an audience of girls and young women.^[2][33][34]
In 1971, Ikeda began her immensely popular shōjo manga Berusaiyu no Bara (The Rose of Versailles), a story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, a cross-dressing woman who was a Captain in Marie Antoinette's Palace Guards in pre-Revolutionary France.^{[2][25][39][40]} In the end, Oscar dies as a revolutionary leading a charge of her troops against the Bastille. Likewise, Hagio Moto's work challenged Neo-Confucianist limits on women's roles and activities ^[26][27][28] as in her 1975 They Were Eleven, a shōjo science fiction story about a young woman cadet in a future space academy.^[41]
These women artists also created considerable stylistic innovations. In its focus on the heroine's inner experiences and feelings, shōjo manga are "picture poems"^[42] with delicate and complex designs that often eliminate panel borders completely to create prolonged, non-narrative extensions of time.^{[2][25][33][34][43]} All of these innovations – strong and independent female characters, intense emotionality, and complex design – remain characteristic of shōjo manga up to the present day.^[32][39]

Shōjo manga and ladies' Comics from 1975 to today

In the following decades (1975–present), shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres.^[44] Major subgenres have included romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レヂィーコミ, and josei 女性 じょせい), whose boundaries are sometimes indistinguishable from each other and from shōnen manga.^[12][25]
In modern shōjo manga romance, love is a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization.^[45] Japanese manga/anime critic Eri Izawa defines romance as symbolizing "the emotional, the grand, the epic; the taste of heroism, fantastic adventure, and the melancholy; passionate love, personal struggle, and eternal longing" set into imaginative, individualistic, and passionate narrative frameworks.^[46] These romances are sometimes long narratives that can deal with distinguishing between false and true love, coping with sexual intercourse, and growing up in a complex world, themes inherited by subsequent animated versions of the story.^[33][45][47] These "coming of age" or Bildungsroman themes occur in both shōjo and shōnen manga.^{[Note 3][Note 4][49]}
In the Bildungsroman, the protagonist must deal with adversity and conflict,^[49] and examples in shōjo manga of romantic conflict are common. They include Miwa Ueda's Peach Girl,^[50][51] Fuyumi Soryo's Mars,^[52] and, for mature readers, Moyoco Anno's Happy Mania,^[34][53] Yayoi Ogawa's Tramps Like Us, and Ai Yazawa's Nana.^[54][55] In another shōjo manga Bildungsroman narrative device, the young heroine is transported to an alien place or time where she meets strangers and must survive on her own (including Hagio Moto's They Were Eleven,^[56] Kyoko Hikawa's From Far Away,^[57] Yû Watase's Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play, and Chiho Saito's The World Exists For Me^[58]).
Yet another such device involves meeting unusual or strange people and beings, for example, Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket^[59]—one of the most popular shōjo manga in the United States^[60]—whose orphaned heroine Tohru must survive living in the woods in a house filled with people who can transform into the animals of the Chinese zodiac. In Harako Iida's Crescent Moon, heroine Mahiru meets a group of supernatural beings, finally to discover that she herself too has a supernatural ancestry when she and a young tengu demon fall in love.^[61]
With the superheroines, shōjo manga continued to break away from neo-Confucianist norms of female meekness and obedience.^[12][33] Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon (Bishōjo Senshi Sēramūn: "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon") is a sustained, 18-volume narrative about a group of young heroines simultaneously heroic and introspective, active and emotional, dutiful and ambitious.^[62][63] The combination proved extremely successful, and Sailor Moon became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats.^[62][64] Another example is CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth, whose three young heroines, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, are magically transported to the world of Cephiro to become armed magical warriors in the service of saving Cephiro from internal and external enemies.^[65]
The superheroine subgenre also extensively developed the notion of teams (sentai) of girls working together,^[66] like the Sailor Senshi in Sailor Moon, the Magic Knights in Magic Knight Rayearth, and the Mew Mew girls from Mia Ikumi's Tokyo Mew Mew.^[67] By today, the superheroine narrative template has been widely used and parodied within the shōjo manga tradition (e.g., Nao Yazawa's Wedding Peach^[68] and Hyper Rune by Tamayo Akiyama^[69]) and outside that tradition, e.g., in bishōjo comedies like Kanan's Galaxy Angel.^[70]
In the mid-1980s and thereafter, as girls who had read shōjo manga as teenagers matured and entered the job market, shōjo manga elaborated subgenres directed at women in their 20s and 30s.^[44] This "Ladies Comic" or redisu-josei subgenre has dealt with themes of young adulthood: jobs, the emotions and problems of sexual intercourse, and friendships or love among women.^{[44][71][72][73][74]}
Redisu manga retains many of the narrative stylistics of shōjo manga but has been drawn by and written for adult women.^[75] Redisu manga and art has been often, but not always, sexually explicit, but sexuality has characteristically been set into complex narratives of pleasure and erotic arousal combined with emotional risk.^[12][71][72] Examples include Ryō Ramiya's Luminous Girls,^[76] Masako Watanabe's Kinpeibai^[77] and the work of Shungicu Uchida^[78] Another subgenre of shōjo-redisu manga deals with emotional and sexual relationships among women (akogare and yuri),^[79] in work by Erica Sakurazawa,^[80] Ebine Yamaji,^[81] and Chiho Saito.^[82] Other subgenres of shōjo-redisu manga have also developed, e.g., fashion (oshare) manga, like Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss^[83][84] and horror-vampire-gothic manga, like Matsuri Hino's Vampire Knight,^[85] Kaori Yuki's Cain Saga,^[86] and Mitsukazu Mihara's DOLL,^[87] which interact with street fashions, costume play ("cosplay"), J-Pop music, and goth subcultures in complex ways.^[88][89][90]
By the start of the 21st century, manga for women and girls thus represented a broad spectrum of material for pre- and early teenagers to material for adult women.

Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga

Manga for male readers can be characterized in different ways. One is by the age of its intended audience: boys up to 18 years old (shōnen manga) and young men 18 to 30 years old (seinen manga).^[91] Another approach is by content, including action-adventure often involving male heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit sexuality.^{[92][Note 5]} Japanese uses different kanji for two closely allied meanings of "seinen"—青年 for "youth, young man" and 成年 for "adult, majority"—the second referring to sexually overt manga aimed at grown men and also called seijin ("adult," 成人) manga.^{[93][Note 6][94]} Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga share many features in common.
Boys and young men were among the earliest readers of manga after World War II.^[95] From the 1950s on, shōnen manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypical boy: sci-tech subjects like robots and space travel, and heroic action-adventure.^[96][97] Shōnen and seinen manga narratives often portray challenges to the protagonist’s abilities, skills, and maturity, stressing self-perfection, austere self-discipline, sacrifice in the cause of duty, and honorable service to society, community, family, and friends.^[95][98]
Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man did not become popular as a shōnen genre.^[95] An exception is Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams, released in the US by DC Comics and in Japan by Kodansha. However, lone heroes occur in Takao Saito's Golgo 13 and Koike and Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub. Golgo 13 is about an assassin who puts his skills to the service of world peace and other social goals,^[99] and Ogami Itto, the swordsman-hero of Lone Wolf and Cub, is a widower caring for his son Daigoro while he seeks vengeance against his wife's murderers. However, Golgo and Itto remain men throughout and neither hero ever displays superpowers. Instead, these stories "journey into the hearts and minds of men" by remaining on the plane of human psychology and motivation.^[100]
Many shōnen manga have science fiction and technology themes. Early examples in the robot subgenre included Tezuka’s Astro Boy (see above) and Fujiko F. Fujio’s 1969 Doraemon, about a robot cat and the boy he lives with, which was aimed at younger boys.^[101] The robot theme evolved extensively, from Mitsuteru Yokoyama's 1956 Tetsujin 28-go to later, more complex stories where the protagonist must not only defeat enemies, but learn to master himself and cooperate with the mecha he controls.^[102] Thus, in Neon Genesis Evangelion by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Shinji struggles against the enemy and against his father, and in Vision of Escaflowne by Katsu Aki, Van not only makes war against Dornkirk’s empire but must deal with his complex feelings for Hitomi, the heroine.
Sports themes are also popular in manga for male readers.^[95] These stories stress self-discipline, depicting not only the excitement of sports competition but also character traits the hero needs to transcend his limitations and to triumph.^[95] Examples include boxing (Tetsuya Chiba’s 1968-1973 Tomorrow's Joe^[103] and Rumiko Takahashi's 1987 One-Pound Gospel) and basketball (Takehiko Inoue’s 1990 Slam Dunk^[104]).
Supernatural settings have been another source of action-adventure plots in shõnen and some shõjo manga in which the hero must master challenges. Sometimes the protagonist fails, as in Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Death Note, where protagonist Light Yagami receives a notebook from a Death God (shinigami) that kills anyone whose name is written in it, and, in a shōjo manga example, Hakase Mizuki's The Demon Ororon, whose protagonist abandons his demonic kingship of Hell to live and die on earth. Sometimes the protagonist himself is supernatural, like Kohta Hirano's Hellsing, whose vampire hero Alucard battles reborn Nazis hellbent on conquering England, but the hero may also be (or was) human, battling an ever-escalating series of supernatural enemies (Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist, Nobuyuki Anzai's Flame of Recca, and Tite Kubo's Bleach).
Military action-adventure stories set in the modern world, for example, about WWII, remained under suspicion of glorifying Japan’s Imperial history^[95] and have not become a significant part of the shōnen manga repertoire.^[95] Nonetheless, stories about fantasy or historical military adventure were not stigmatized, and manga about heroic warriors and martial artists have been extremely popular.^[95] Some are serious dramas, like Sanpei Shirato's The Legend of Kamui and Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki, but others contain strongly humorous elements, like Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball.
Although stories about modern war and its weapons do exist, they deal as much or more with the psychological and moral problems of war as they do with sheer shoot-'em-up adventure.^[95] Examples include Seiho Takizawa's Who Fighter, a retelling of Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness about a renegade Japanese colonel set in WWII Burma, Kaiji Kawaguchi's The Silent Service, about a Japanese nuclear submarine, and Motofumi Kobayashi's Apocalypse Meow, about the Vietnam War told in talking animal format. Other battle and fight-oriented manga are complex stories of criminal and espionage conspiracies to be overcome by the protagonist, such as City Hunter by Hojo Tsukasa, Fist of the North Star by Tetsuo Hara, and in the shōjo manga From Eroica with Love by Yasuko Aoike, a long-running crime-espionage story combining adventure, action, and humor (and another example of how these themes occur across genres).
For manga critics Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma,^[105] such battle stories endlessly repeat the same mindless themes of violence, which they sardonically label the "Shonen Manga Plot Shish Kebob", where fights follow fights like meat skewered on a stick.^[106] Other commentators suggest that fight sequences and violence in comics serve as a social outlet for otherwise dangerous impulses.^[107] Shōnen manga and its extreme warriorship have been parodied, for example, in Mine Yoshizaki's screwball comedy Sgt. Frog (Keroro Gunso), about a platoon of slacker alien frogs who invade the Earth and end up free-loading off the Hinata family in Tokyo.^[108]

Sex and women's roles in manga for males

In early shōnen manga, men and boys played all the major roles, with women and girls having only auxiliary places as sisters, mothers, and occasionally girlfriends. Of the nine cyborgs in Shotaro Ishinomori's 1964 Cyborg 009, only one is female, and she soon vanishes from the action. Some recent shōnen manga virtually omit women, e.g., the martial arts story Baki the Grappler by Itagaki Keisuke and the supernatural fantasy Sand Land by Akira Toriyama. However, by the 1980s, girls and women began to play increasingly important roles in shōnen manga, for example, Toriyama's 1980 Dr. Slump, whose main character is the mischievous and powerful girl robot Arale Norimaki.
The role of girls and women in manga for male readers has evolved considerably since Arale. One class is the pretty girl (bishōjo).^{[Note 7]} Sometimes the woman is unattainable, but she is always an object of the hero's emotional and sexual interest, like Belldandy from Oh My Goddess! by Kōsuke Fujishima and Shao-lin from Guardian Angel Getten by Minene Sakurano.^[109] In other stories, the hero is surrounded by such girls and women, as in Negima by Ken Akamatsu and Hanaukyo Maid Team by Morishige.^[110] The male protagonist does not always succeed in forming a relationship with the woman, for example when Bright Honda and Aimi Komori fail to bond in Shadow Lady by Masakazu Katsura. In other cases, a successful couple's sexual activities are depicted or implied, like Outlanders by Johji Manabe.^[111] In still other cases, the initially naive and immature hero grows up to become a man by learning how to deal and live with women emotionally and sexually, like Yota in Video Girl Ai by Masakazu Katsura, Train Man in Train Man: Densha Otoko by Hidenori Hara, and Makoto in Futari Ecchi by Katsu Aki.^[112][113] In poruno- and eromanga (seijin manga), often called hentai manga in the US, a sexual relationship is taken for granted and depicted explicitly, as in work by Toshiki Yui ^[114] and in Were-Slut by Jiro Chiba and Slut Girl by Isutoshi.^[115] The result is a range of depictions of boys and men from naive to very experienced sexually.
Heavily armed female warriors (sentō bishōjo) represent another class of girls and women in manga for male readers.^{[Note 8]} Some sentō bishōjo are battle cyborgs, like Alita from Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro, Motoko Kusanagi from Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell, and Chise from Shin Takahashi's Saikano. Others are human, like Attim M-Zak from Hiroyuki Utatane's Seraphic Feather, Johji Manabe's Karula Olzen from Drakuun, and Alita Forland (Falis) from Sekihiko Inui's Murder Princess.^[116]
As of 2013 national censorship laws and local ordinances remain in Japan and the public response to the publication of manga with sexual content or the depiction of nudity has been mixed. Series have an audience and sell well but their publication also encounters opposition. In the early 1990s the opposition resulted in the creation of Harmful manga lists and a shift in the publishing industry. By this time large publishers had created a general manga demand but the corollary is that they were also susceptible to public opinion in their markets. Faced with criticism from certain segments of the population and under pressure from industry groups to self-regulate, major publishing houses discontinued series, such as Angel and 1+2=Paradise, while smaller publication companies, not as susceptible to these forces, were able to fill the void.^[1][117]
With the relaxation of censorship in Japan after the early 1990s, a wide variety of explicitly drawn sexual themes appeared in manga intended for male readers that correspondingly occur in English translations.^[94] These depictions range from mild partial nudity through implied and explicit sexual intercourse through bondage and sadomasochism (SM), zoophilia (bestiality), incest, and rape.^[118] In some cases, rape and lust murder themes came to the forefront, as in Urotsukidoji by Toshio Maeda^[119] and Blue Catalyst from 1994 by Kei Taniguchi,^[120] but these extreme themes are not commonplace in either untranslated or translated manga.^[94][121]

Gekiga

Main article: Gekiga

Gekiga literally means "drama pictures" and refers to a form of aesthetic realism in manga.^[122][123] Gekiga style drawing is emotionally dark, often starkly realistic, sometimes very violent, and focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, often drawn in gritty and unpretty fashions.^[122][124] Gekiga arose in the late 1950s and 1960s partly from left-wing student and working class political activism^[122][125] and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.^[126][127] Examples include Sampei Shirato's 1959-1962 Chronicles of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments (Ninja Bugeichō), the story of Kagemaru, the leader of a peasant rebellion in the 16th century, which dealt directly with oppression and class struggle,^[128] and Hiroshi Hirata's Satsuma Gishiden, about uprisings against the Tokugawa shogunate.^[129]
As the social protest of these early years waned, gekiga shifted in meaning towards socially conscious, mature drama and towards the avant-garde.^{[123][127][130]} Examples include Koike and Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub^[131] and Akira, an apocalyptic tale of motorcycle gangs, street war, and inexplicable transformations of the children of a future Tokyo. Another example is Osamu Tezuka's 1976 manga MW, a bitter story of the aftermath of the storage and possibly deliberate release of poison gas by U.S. armed forces based in Okinawa years after World War II.^[132] Gekiga and the social consciousness it embodies remain alive in modern-day manga. An example is Ikebukuro West Gate Park from 2001 by Ira Ishida and Sena Aritou, a story of street thugs, rape, and vengeance set on the social margins of the wealthy Ikebukuro district of Tokyo.^[133]

Anime

a style of Japanese film and television animation, typically aimed at adults as well as children. 

 

 

(WIKIPEDIA)
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the oldest surviving anime being Namakura Gatana (Blunt Sword).^[1]
The first generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Jun'ichi Kōuchi and Seitaro Kitayama, commonly referred to as the "fathers" of anime.^[2] 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, 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's like Gundam, Macross, Dragon Ball, and genres such as Real Robot, Space Opera and Cyberpunk. Space Battleship Yamato and The Super Dimension Fortress Macross also achieved worldwide success after being adapted respectively as Star Blazers and Robotech.
The film Akira set records in 1988 for the production costs of an anime film and went on to become an international success. Later, in 2004, the same creators produced Steamboy, which took over as 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.

First generation

See also: List of anime by release date (pre-1939) and Kamishibai

According to Natsuki Matsumoto, the first animated film produced in Japan may have stemmed from as early as 1907. Known as Katsudō Shashin (活動写真, Activity Photo) from its depiction of a boy in a sailor suit drawing the characters for "Katsudō Shashin", the film was first found in 2005. It consists of fifty frames stenciled directly onto a strip of celluloid.^[3][4] This claim has not been verified though and predates the first showing of animated films in Japan. The date and first film publicly displayed is another source of contention, while no Japanese produced animation is definitively known to date before 1917, the possibility exists that other films entered Japan and that no known records have surfaced to prove a showing prior to 1912.^[5] Film titles have surfaced over the years, but none have been proven to predate this year. The first foreign animation is known to have been found in Japan in 1910, but it is not clear if the film was ever shown in a cinema or publicly displayed at all. Yasushi Watanabe found a film known as 不思議のボールド (Fushigi nobōrudo Miracle Board^?) in the records of the 吉沢商店 (Yoshizawa Shōten^?) company. The description matches James Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, though academic consensus on whether or not this is a true animated film is disputed.^[5] According to Kyokko Yoshiyama, the first animated film called ニッパールの変形 (Nippaaru's Transformation^?) was shown in Japan at the 浅草帝国館 (Asakusa Teikokukan^?) in Tokyo sometime in 1911. Yoshiyama did not refer to the film as "animation" though. The first confirmed animated film shown in Japan was Les Exploits de Feu Follet by Émile Cohl on April 15, 1912. While speculation and other "trick films" have been found in Japan, it is the first recorded account of a public showing of a two-dimensional animated film in Japanese cinema. During this time, German animations marketed for home release were distributed in Japan.^[5]
Few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived. The reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature. After the clips had their run, reels (being property of the cinemas) were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as strips or single frames. The first anime that was produced in Japan was made sometime in 1917, but there is dispute on which title was the first to get that honor. It has been confirmed though that Dekobō shingachō – Meian no shippai (凸坊新画帳・名案の失敗 Bumpy new picture book – Failure of a great plan^?) was made sometime during February, 1917. At least two unconfirmed titles were reported to have been made the previous month.^[5]
The first anime short films were made by three leading figures in the industry. Ōten Shimokawa was a political caricaturist and cartoonist who worked for the magazine Tokyo Puck. He was hired by Tenkatsu to do an animation for them. Due to medical reasons, he was only able to do five movies, including Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki (1917), before he returned to his previous work as a cartoonist. Another prominent animator in this period was Jun'ichi Kōuchi. He was a caricaturist and painter, who also had studied watercolor painting. In 1912, he also entered the cartoonist sector and was hired for an animation by Kobayashi Shokai later in 1916. He is viewed as the most technically advanced Japanese animator of the 1910s. His works include around 15 movies. The third was Seitaro Kitayama, an early animator who made animations on his own and was not hired by larger corporations. He eventually founded his own animation studio, the Kitayama Eiga Seisakujo, which was later closed due to lack of commercial success. He utilized the chalkboard technique, and later paper animation, with and without pre-printed backgrounds. The works of these two latter pioneers include Namakura Gatana (An Obtuse Sword, 1917) and a 1918 film Urashima Tarō which were discovered together at an antique market in 2007.^[6]

Second generation

Yasuji Murata, Hakuzan Kimura, Sanae Yamamoto and Noburō Ōfuji were students of Kitayama Seitaro and worked at his film studio. Kenzō Masaoka, another important animator, worked at a smaller animation studio. In 1923, the Great Kantō earthquake destroyed most of the Kitayama studio and the residing animators spread out and founded studios of their own.
Prewar animators faced several difficulties. First, they had a hard time competing with foreign producers such as Disney, which were influential on both audiences and producers. Since foreign films had already made a profit abroad, they could be sold for even less than the price domestic producers need to charge in order to break even.^[7] Japanese animators thus had to work cheaply, in small companies with only a handful of employees, but that could make matters worse: given costs, it was then hard to compete in terms of quality with foreign product that was in color, with sound, and made by much bigger companies. Japanese animation until the mid-1930s, for instance, generally used cutout animation instead of cel animation because the celluloid was too expensive.^[8] This resulted in animation that could seem derivative, flat (since motion forward and backward was difficult) and without detail.^[9] But just as postwar Japanese animators were able to turn limited animation into a plus, so masters such as Yasuji Murata and Noburō Ōfuji were able to do wonders in cutout animation.
Animators such as Kenzō Masaoka and Mitsuyo Seo, however, did attempt to bring Japanese animation up to the level of foreign work by introducing cel animation, sound, and technology such as the multiplane camera. Masaoka created the first talkie anime, Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, released in 1933,^{[10][11][page needed]} and the first anime made entirely using cel animation, The Dance of the Chagamas (1934).^[12] Seo was the first to use the multiplane camera in Ari-chan in 1941.
Such innovations, however, were hard to support purely commercially, so prewar animation depended considerably on sponsorship, as animators often concentrated on making PR films for companies, educational films for the government, and eventually works of propaganda for the military.^[13] During this time, censorship and school regulations discouraged film-viewing by children, so anime that offered educational value were supported and encouraged by the Monbusho (the Ministry of Education). This proved important for producers that had experienced a hard time releasing their work in regular theaters. Animation had found a place in scholastic, political and industrial use.

During the second World War

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

In the 1930s the Japanese government began enforcing cultural nationalism. This also lead to a strict censorship and control of published media. Many animators were urged to produce animations which enforced the Japanese spirit and national affiliation. Some movies were shown in newsreel theaters, 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.^[14] 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 just three big companies.
More animated films were commissioned by the military,^[15] showing the sly, quick Japanese people winning against enemy forces. In 1943, Geijutsu Eigasha produced Mitsuyo Seo's Momotaro's Sea Eagles with help from the Navy. Shochiku then made Japan's first real feature length animated film, Seo's Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors in 1945, again with the help of the Navy. In 1941 Princess Iron Fan had become the first Asian animation of notable length ever made in China. Due to economic factors, it would be Japan which later emerged long after the war with the most readily available resources to continue expanding the industry.

Toei Animation and Mushi Production

In 1948, Toei Animation was founded and produced the first color anime feature film in 1958, Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent, 1958).
It was released in the US in 1961 as Panda and the Magic Serpent.^[16] After the success of the project, Toei released a new feature length animation annually.^[17]:101
Toei's style was also characterized by an emphasis on each animator bringing his own ideas to the production. The most extreme example of this is Isao Takahata's film Hols: Prince of the Sun (1968). Hols is often seen as the first major break from the normal anime style and the beginning of a later movement of "auteuristic" or "progressive anime" which would eventually involve directors such as Hayao Miyazaki (creator of Spirited Away) and Mamoru Oshii.^{[citation needed]}
A major contribution of Toei's style to modern anime was the development of the "money shot". This cost-cutting method of animation allows for emphasis to be placed on important shots by animating them with more detail than the rest of the work (which would often be limited animation). Toei animator Yasuo Ōtsuka began to experiment with this style and developed it further as he went into television. In the 1980s Toei would later lend its talent to companies like Sunbow Productions, Marvel Productions, DiC Entertainment, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, Ruby Spears and Hanna Barbera with producing several animated cartoons for America during this period. Other studios like TMS Entertainment, were also being used in the 80's, which lead to Asian studios being used more often to animate foreign productions, but the companies involved still produced anime for their native Japan.^{[citation needed]}
Osamu Tezuka established Mushi Production in 1961, after Tezuka's contract with Toei Animation expired. The studio pioneered TV animation in Japan, and was responsible for successful TV series such as Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Gokū no Daibōken and Princess Knight.
Their Anime was also the first to reach overseas on the NBC in 1963, although Osamu Tezuka would already complain about the restrictions on US television, and the alterations that would have to be made for broadcast.^[18]

1960s

The 1960s introduced the first animated television series. Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy)) is often miscredited as the first television anime series.^[19] The first animated television series in Japan was Instant History, although it did not consist entirely of animation.^[17]:90 Astro Boy was highly influential to other anime in the 1960s.^[20] There was a surplus of anime about robots and/or space that followed.
The first animation to be broadcast was Three Tales, but it is a film, not a series. 1963 premiered several television anime other than Astro Boy, which premiered on the first day of the year. Sennin Buraku, Tetsujin 28-go, Ginga Shounen Tai, and 8 Man are among other television anime that began airing that year.1963 also introduced Toei Doga's first anime television series Wolf Boy Ken. Fujiko Fujio's first manga to be animated was Shisukon Ouji in the same year. Due to the success of these titles in 1963, there were a few more anime introduced in 1964. Most notable is the 59-episode adaptation of Tezuka's Big X or Shōnen Ninja Kaze no Fujimaru. Mushi Pro continued to produce more television anime and met success with titles such as Kimba the White Lion in 1965.Other important anime of '65 include Prince Planet, Hustle Punch Super Jetter and Patrol Hopper. 1966 saw a change from monochrome animation into an addition of a few color titles. Nonetheless, most of the biggest hits were black-and-white titles. What is noted as the first magical girl anime, Sally the Witch, was broadcast. A manga adaptation came before the anime and was written by Gigantor creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Tetsuya Chiba's first manga to be animated, Harris no Kaze, premiered, as well as Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 precursor anime series Rainbow Sentai Robin. Robin is the first televised sentai team series. In 1967 the original Speed Racer television anime began. It was another anime brought to the west that met 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. Anime adapted from manga became increasingly more popular at the end of the decade. The first anime adaptation of Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 was created following up to the film adaptation two years prior. The first of many anime for GeGeGe no Kitarō also began airing in 1968. In the same year, the anime adaptation of Ikki Kajiwara and Noboru Kawasaki's Star of the Giants aired, making it the first sports anime. Soon after followed Attack No. 1, another sports anime, which was quintessential in causing an extreme increase in popularity for shoujo and sports anime. Another legendary title is Tiger Mask (also written by Kajiwara) which was highly influential in anime and real life wrestling.
The long-running Sazae-san anime also began in 1969 and continues today with excess of 6500 episodes broadcast as of 2014. With an audience share of 25% the series is still the most popular anime broadcast.^[16]:725

1970s

During the 1970s, the Japanese film market shrunk due to competition from television. This increased competition from television reduced Toei animation's staff and many animators went to studios such as A Pro and Telecom animation. Mushi Production went bankrupt (only to be revived 4 years later), its former employees founding studios such as Madhouse and Sunrise. Many young animators were thrust into the position of director before they would have been promoted to it. This 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 currently popularity, the first season only ran for 23 episodes before being cancelled. The second season in 1977 saw considerably more success, spanning 155 episodes over three years.
Another example of this experimentation is with 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. Most TV networks thought the TV show wouldn't be successful because children needed something more fantastic to draw them in. Heidi wound up being an international success being picked up in many European countries and becoming popular there. In Japan it was so successful that it allowed for Hayao Miyazaki and Takahata to start up 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).
Another genre known as Mecha came into being at this time. Some early works include Mazinger Z (1972–74), Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972–74), Space Battleship Yamato (1974–75) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–80). These titles showed a progression in the science fiction genre in anime, as shows shifted from more superhero-oriented, fantastical plots found, as seen in the Super Robot genre, to somewhat more realistic space operas with increasingly complex plots and fuzzier definitions of right and wrong, as seen in the Real Robot genre. Mazinger Z is considered the first piloted mecha ever created in anime and manga.
As a contrast to the action oriented shows, shows for a female audience such as Candy Candy and Rose of Versailles, earned high popularity on Japanese Television and later in other parts of the world.^[21]
Also 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 Vikings. Italy, Spain and France grew an interest into Japan's output and imported in masses for a cheap selling price that Japan was offering.^{[21][page needed][22]}

1980s

The release of Space Battleship Yamato is often cited as the beginning of anime space operas.

The shift towards space operas became more pronounced with the commercial success of Star Wars (1977).^{[citation needed]} This allowed for the space opera Space Battleship Yamato (1974) to be revived as a theatrical film. Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), the first Real Robot anime, was also initially unsuccessful but was revived as a theatrical film in 1982. The success of the theatrical versions of Yamato and Gundam are seen as the beginning of the anime boom of the 1980s. This anime boom also marked the beginning of "Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age".^[23]
While the mecha genre shifted from giant robots (the Mecha genre of the 1970s) to elaborate space operas (the Real Robot genre of the 1980s), two other events happened at this time. A subculture in Japan, who later called themselves otaku, began to develop around animation magazines such as Animage or later Newtype. These magazines popped up in response to the overwhelming fandom that developed around shows such as Yamato and Gundam in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Yamato animator Yoshinori Kanada allowed individual key animators working under him to put their own style of movement as a means to save money.^{[citation needed]} In many more "auteuristic" anime this formed the basis of an individualist animation style unique to Japanese commercial animation. In addition, Kanada's animation was inspiration for Takashi Murakami and his Superflat art movement.
In the United States the already mentioned popularity of Star Wars had a similar, but much smaller, effect on the development of anime.^{[citation needed]} 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%.^[24] As well as adapted anime, many American companies utilised Japanese animation studios to animated their television series, examples include Takara's/Toei animation's The Transformers and Hasbro's G.I. Joe television series and Gaylord Entertainment/Tokyo Movie Shinsha's The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. Popular American entertainment franchises from the 1980s often originated from pre-existing Japanese franchises, such as "Transformers" and "Robotech". Franchises such as "Transformers", which were adapted from the unpopular Japanese "Diaclone" and "Microman" toy franchises by "Takara", also became popular in Japan and even promted anime continuations of the American/Japanese animated series, such as "Transformers: The Headmasters", "Transformers: Super God Masterforce", "Transformers: Victory", and the OVA's "Transformers: The Movie" and "Transformers: Zone".
The otaku culture 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 culture 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 (to that point) anime film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987).

Ghibli.

One of the most influential anime of all time, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), was made during this time 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 set up 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 YuYu Hakusho (1990), One Piece (1999), and Naruto (2002).
The 1980s brought anime to the home video market in the form of Original Video Animation (OVA). The first OVA was Mamoru Oshii's Moon Base Dallos (1983–1984). Dallos was a flop, but later titles like Fire Tripper, Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, and Megazone 23 (all 1985) were successful. Leda was in fact so successful, it was released theatrically at the end of the year. 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 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 now known made its debut in 1983 with an anime adaptation Yoichi Takahashi's soccer manga Captain Tsubasa, which became the first worldwide successful sports anime leading its way to create themes and stories that would create the formula that would later be used in many sports series that soon followed such as Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield 21.
The late 1980s, following the release of Nausicaä, saw an increasing number of high budget and/or experimental films. In 1985 Toshio Suzuki helped put together funding for Oshii's experimental film Angel's Egg (1985). The OVA market allowed for short experimental pieces such as Take the X Train, Neo Tokyo, and Robot Carnival (all three 1987).
Theatrical releases became more ambitious, each film trying to outclass or outspend the other film, all 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 two of the most expensive anime film productions ever: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987) and Akira (1988).
Most of these films did not make back the costs to produce them. Neither Akira nor Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise were box office successes in Japan. As a result, large numbers of anime studios closed down, and many experimental productions began to be favored less over "tried and true" formulas. Only Studio Ghibli was able to survive a winner of the many ambitious productions of the late 1980s with its film Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) being the top-grossing film for 1989 earning over $40 million at the box office.
Despite the failure of Akira 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, brought a close to the 1980s era of anime.

1990s

In 1995, Hideaki Anno wrote and directed the controversial anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion. This show became popular in Japan among anime fans and became known to the general public through mainstream media attention. It is believed that Anno originally wanted the show to be the ultimate otaku anime designed to revive the declining anime industry, but midway through production he also made it into a heavy critique of the culture eventually culminating in the still controversial, but quite successful film The End of Evangelion (1997) which grossed over $10 million. Anno would eventually go on to produce live action films. Many scenes in Evangelion were so controversial that it forced TV Tokyo to clamp down with censorship of violence and sexuality in anime. As a result, when Cowboy Bebop (1998) was first broadcast it was shown heavily edited and only half the episodes were aired; though it too eventually managed to cement itself as a mainstream hit both in and outside of Japan.
In addition, Evangelion started up a series of so-called "post-Evangelion" or "organic" mecha shows. Most of these were giant robot shows with some kind of religious or difficult plot. These include RahXephon, Brain Powerd, and Gasaraki. Another series of these are late night experimental TV shows. Starting with Serial Experiments Lain (1998) late night Japanese television became a forum for experimental anime with other shows following it such as Boogiepop Phantom (2000), Texhnolyze (2003) and Paranoia Agent (2004). Experimental anime films were also released in the 1990s, most notably the cyberpunk thriller Ghost in the Shell (1995), which alongside Megazone 23 (1985),^[25] had a strong influence on The Matrix.^[26][27][28] Ghost in the Shell, alongside Evangelion and the neo-noir space western Cowboy Bebop, helped further entrench the awareness of anime in the international consciousness born out of the success of Akira.^[29]
The late 1990s also saw a brief revival of the Super Robot genre that was once popular in the 1960s and 1970s but had become rare due to the popularity of Real Robot shows such as the Gundam and Macross series in the 1980s and psychological Mecha shows such as Neon Genesis Evangelion in the 1990s. The revival of the Super Robot genre began with the Brave (Yuusha) Series, starting with Brave Exkaiser in 1990, also there were many remakes and sequels of 70s super robot shows such as Getter Robo Go and Tetsujin-28 go FX in response to "post-Evangelion" trends, but there were very few popular Super Robot shows produced after this, until Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in 2007.
Alongside its Super Robot counterpart, the Real Robot genre was also declining during the 1990s. Though several Gundam shows were produced during this decade, very few of them were successful. The only Gundam shows in the 1990s which managed an average television rating over 4% in Japan were Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994) and New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (1995). It wasn't until Mobile Suit Gundam SEED in 2002 that the Real Robot genre regained its popularity.^[24]

3D rendering was used in this scene of Princess Mononoke, the most
 expensive animated film at the time
costing $20 million

The 1990s also saw the popular video game series, Pokémon, spawn an anime television show which is still running, several anime movies, a trading card game, toys, and much more. Other 1990s anime series which gained international success were Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and Digimon; the success of these shows marked the beginning of the martial arts superhero genre, the magical girl genre, and the action adventure genre respectively. In particular, Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon were dubbed into more than a dozen languages worldwide. Another large success was the anime One Piece, based on the best-selling manga of all time, which is still ongoing.
In 1997, Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke became the most expensive animated film up until that time, costing $20 million to produce. Miyazaki personally checked each of the 144,000 cels in the film,^[30] and is estimated to have redrawn parts of 80,000 of them.^[31]
In 1999, the seinen genre of anime was paid tribute to in the franchise The Matrix.

2000s

The "Evangelion-era" trend continued into the 2000s with Evangelion-inspired mecha anime such as RahXephon (2002) and Zegapain (2006) - RahXephon was also intended to help revive 1970s-style mecha designs.
The Real Robot genre (including the Gundam and Macross franchises), which had declined during the 1990s, was revived in 2002 with the success of shows such as Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002), Eureka Seven (2005), Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (2006), Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007), and Macross Frontier (2008).
The 1970s-style Super Robot genre revival started by GaoGaiGar (1997), continued into the 2000s, with several remakes of classic series such as Getter Robo and Dancougar as well as original properties created in the Super Robot mold like Godannar and Gurren Lagann. In particular, Gurren Lagann combined the genre with elements from 1980s Real Robot shows as well as 1990s "post-Evangelion" shows. Gurren Lagann received both the "best television production" and "best character design" awards from the Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2008.^[32] This eventually culminated in the release of Shin Mazinger in 2009, a full-length revival of the first Super Robot series, Mazinger Z.
An art movement started by Takashi Murakami that combined Japanese pop-culture with postmodern art called Superflat began around this time. Murakami asserts that the movement is an analysis of post-war Japanese culture through the eyes of the otaku subculture. His desire is also to get rid of the categories of 'high' and 'low' art making a flat continuum, hence the term 'superflat'. His art exhibitions are very popular and have an influence on some anime creators particularly those from Studio 4 °C.^{[citation needed]}
The experimental late night anime trend popularized by Serial Experiments Lain also continued into the 2000s with experimental anime such as Boogiepop Phantom (2000), Texhnolyze (2003), Paranoia Agent (2004), Gantz (2004), and Ergo Proxy (2006)
In addition to these experimental trends, the 2000s was also characterized by the increase of the moe-style art and the bishōjo and bishōnen character design. The presence and popularity of genres such as romance, harem and slice of life rose.
Anime based on eroge and visual novels increased in popularity in the 2000s, building on a trend started in the late 90s by such works as Sentimental Journey (1998) and To Heart (1999). Examples of such works include Green Green (2003), SHUFFLE! (2006), Kanon (2002 and 2006), Fate/Stay Night (2006), Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (2006), Ef: A Tale of Memories (2007), True Tears (2008), and Clannad (2008 and 2009).
Many shows are being adapted from manga and light novels as well including popular titles such as Inuyasha (2000), Naruto (2002), Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Monster (2004), Bleach (2004), Rozen Maiden (2005), Aria the Animation (2005), Shakugan no Shana (2005), Pani Poni Dash! (2005), Death Note (2006), Mushishi (2006), Sola (2007), The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), Lucky Star (2007), Toradora! (2008–09), K-On! (2009), Bakemonogatari (2009), and Fairy Tail (2009), Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (2009); these shows typically last several years and achieve large fanbases. Nevertheless, original anime titles are stlil being created which reach success.
The 2000s also mark a trend of emphasis of the otaku subculture. A notable critique of this otaku subculture is found in the 2006 anime Welcome to the N.H.K., which features a hikikomori protagonist and explores the effects and consequences of various Japanese sub-cultures, such as otaku, lolicon, internet suicide, massively multiplayer online games and multi-level marketing.
In contrast to the above-mentioned phenomenon, there have been more productions of late night anime for a non-otaku audience as well. The first concentrated effort came from Fuji TV's Noitamina block. The 30-minute late Thursday timeframe was created to showcase productions for young women of college age, a demographic that watches very little anime. The first production Honey and Clover was a particular success, peaking at a 5% TV rating in Kantou, very strong for late night anime. The block has been running uninterrupted since April 2005 and has yielded many successful productions unique in the modern anime market.
There have been revivals of American cartoons such as Transformers which spawned four new series, Transformers: Car Robots in 2000, Transformers: Micron Legend in 2003, Transformers: Superlink in 2004, and Transformers: Galaxy Force in 2005. In addition, an anime adaptation of the G.I Joe series was produced titled 'G.I. Joe: Sigma 6'.
The 2000s also saw the revival of earlier anime series in the forms of Fist of the North Star: The Legends of the True Savior (2006) and Dragon Ball Z Kai (2009). Later series also started receiving revivals in the late 2000s and early 2010s, such as with Studio Khara's premier Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, (2007-), and new adaptations of Masamune Shirow's manga Appleseed XIII (2011) and Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013-).
The decade also dawned a revival of high-budget feature-length anime films, such as Millennium Actress (2001), Metropolis (2001), Appleseed (2001), Paprika (2006), and the most expensive of all being Steamboy (2004) which cost $26 million to produce. Satoshi Kon established himself alongside Otomo and Oshii as one of the premier directors of anime film, before his premature death at the age of 46. Other younger film directors, such as Mamoru Hosoda, director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Summer Wars (2009), also began to reach prominence.
During this decade, anime feature films were nominated and won major international film awards for the first time in the industry's history. In 2002, Spirited Away, a Studio Ghibli production directed by Hayao Miyazaki, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and in 2003 at the 75th Academy Awards it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the first non-American film to win the award and is one of only two to do so. It has also become the highest grossing anime film, with a worldwide box office of US$274 million.
Following the launch of Toonami on Cartoon Network and later Adult Swim, anime saw a giant rise in the North American market. Kid-friendly anime such as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, Doraemon, Bakugan, Beyblade, and the 4Kids Entertainment adaptation of One Piece have all received varying levels of success. This era also saw the rise of anime-influenced animation, most notably Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, Ben 10, Chaotic, Samurai Jack, The Boondocks, RWBY and Teen Titans.
At the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, directed by Mamoru Oshii, was in competition for the Palme d'Or and in 2006, at the 78th Academy Awards, Howl's Moving Castle, another Studio Ghibli-produced film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was nominated for Best Animated Feature. 5 Centimeters Per Second, directed by Makoto Shinkai, won the inaugural Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2007, and so far, anime films have been nominated for the award every year.

2010s

In 2012, the Toonami block in the US was relaunched as an adult-oriented action block on Adult Swim, bringing uncut anime to a far wider audience. In addition to re-releasing older shows, the block (as well as Adult Swim itself) also oversees the premiere of English releases for various new shows, including: Durarara!! (2010), Deadman Wonderland (2011), Hunter x Hunter (2011), Sword Art Online (2012), Psycho-Pass (2012), Attack on Titan (2013), Kill la Kill (2013), Space Dandy (2014), Akame ga Kill! (2014), Parasyte -the maxim- (2014), and One Punch Man (2015).
On September 6, 2013 Hayao Miyazaki announced that The Wind Rises (2013) would be his last film, and on August 3, 2014 it was announced that Studio Ghibli was "temporarily halting production" following the release of When Marnie Was There (2014), further substantiating the finality of Miyazaki's retirement. The disappointing sales of Isao Takahata's comeback film The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) has also been cited as a factor.^[33] Additionally, various international anime distribution companies, such as ADV Films, Bandai Entertainment, and Geneon Entertainment, were shut down due to poor revenue, with their assets spun into new companies like Sentai Filmworks or given to other companies.
Both Attack on Titan and The Wind Rises reflect a national debate surrounding the reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, with Miyazaki's pacifism in the film coming under fire from the political right,^[34] while Attack on Titan has been accused of promoting militarism by people in neighboring Asian countries, despite being intended to show the haunting, hopeless aspects of conflict.^[35] The mecha anime genre (as well as Japanese kaiju films) received a Western homage with the 2013 film Pacific Rim directed by Guillermo del Toro.^[36]