Manga Underground v3.1

“Hi I’m Eddiel Carrete”

Anime: An Invasion From the East  (Research)

A lot of Japanese anime, not all of it but certainly a lot of it is directed to audience which age it’s in the double digits, and many of it’s viewers have triple digits IQ’s but what is anime? In short anime: well anime (pronounced ah-nee-may), as defined by common non-Japanese fan usage, is any animation made in Japan. In Japan, the word means “animation.”(Poitras) The history behind anime is a rich and diverse one, in popular believe it starts like many other things with the restoration in Japan following World War II, but it goes way back to earlier in the century. You can’t talk about the origins of anime without mentioning Brothers Max, and Dave Fleischer, and of course, the most influential animator to this day, Walt Disney. Just as Walt Disney was of mayor influence in animation for pretty much a century, Osamu Tezuka, is the Japanese equivalent, his influence is still emulated to this day among manga authors, and anime directors, his stories and characters such as Astroboy, Kimba the White Lion, Princess Knight, are now icons among fans. The influence that anime has now can not be over looked, it went from being an underdog, to having followers in the thousands, just AX (Anime Expo) an anime convention which started in 1997 with an attendance of over one thousand seven hundred, to well over 40,000 in 2007 making it the largest anime and manga convention in the United States. With all this said like many things here in the United States anime is sometimes erroneously referred to as a “genre,” it is in reality an art from that includes all he genres found in cinema or literature, from Heroic epics and romances to science fiction and comedy. (Poitras)
In popular believe among otaku* or the ones that really don’t know about anime, they think that Dr. Osamu Tesuka is often considered the “Father of Anime” and his is called the Japanese Walt Disney, although this is true, it is false in the sense that the first anime dates back all the way to the early of the century in a short 3 second cartoon, and the first full-length animated feature, was “Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (Momotar Umi no Shinpei)” (1945) the director was Mitsuyo Seo, and the producer: The Japanese Imperial Navy Department of Information. The movie (74 min) was a political propaganda for the support of the war in the pacific, ironically the movie was released mere weeks before the end of the war. In a coincidental similarity to many later anime “movies” is has a disjointed quality, seemingly resulting from the output of separate teams.(Clements & McCarthy).
Ironically there would be no animation in Japan or anywhere else had it not been developed in the United States shortly after movies themselves were invented, and even then animation can be traced back to the 1600’s and 1700’s, when a device, the magic lanterns was developed by Athanasius Kircher in Rome in 1645(Solomon). Between the World Wars of the two mainstay studios in American animation, one didn’t last very long. Brothers Max and Cave Fleischer had some very popular characters to their credit. These included the animated versions of the Superman comic book and of the newspaper comic Popeye, and especially the cartoon vamp Betty Boop. The top of the animation mountain was of course, Walt Disney. He pioneered sound and color. If people anywhere in the world saw animation at all before 1941, it was probably Disney animation. Disney broke new ground with the 1937 feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Poitras).

At first the Japanese took their cues on animation from the same medium that American television animation did: Disney’s animated theatrical short subjects and feature films however, Disney’s early animation, both the artistic technique and the humanist philosophy, became the subjects of study for Osamu Tezuka. Nicknamed “manga no kamisama” (God of Comics) it is not an exaggeration, his forty years as a cartoonist saw massive changes in the form and content of Japanese comic books, changes that usually trace back to innovations by Dr. Tezuka himself. His manga, and estimated career total of 150,000 pages (poitras). Of this what really stand out the most are his creations: Astro Boy (1963) in popular believe, Astroboy is erroneously regarded as the first TV anime series, a combination of Pinocchio and Superman, it became the first of many animated adaptations by Tezuka of his own work. Astro Boy does holds the title of being the first anime to be broadcast abroad; it was adapted for the English-language marked by Fred Ladd, and its success created the first wave of anime abroad.(“Instant History” is actually the first TV series. Though Instant History was the first TV series, it was still not the first anime broadcast on TV that honor goes to “Three Tales” (1960)(Clements & McCarthy)). Kimba the White Lion: Paid in part with money from American network NBC, Kimba was made with the demands of the foreign market in mind. Kimba became the first full-color anime TV series. Several episodes were cut together to make the movie “Jungle Emperor”(1966) which was nominated for a Golden Lion for animation at the Venice Film Festival. On a comical note Kimba’s name was Leo, but it was regarded as in the American market, where it was the name of the MGM lion; instead, the translators originally intended to mane their hero Simba, Swahili for Lion. This was also rejected on account of a number of African-American trademarks applications using the Simba name, though the coincidence would return to haunt the franchise in the 1990’s (Disney’s “The Lion King” was released in 1994 see both stories to understand the joke). Princess Knight the first cross-dressing story, regarded as the first shojo in history. This series created a new genre from nothing, a type of story that was mainly directed to the female audience. This gem of a series, much loved in Europe, is less well known in the English-speaking world despite several English-language releases, but its enduring influence can be seen in the massive success of its immediate heirs Rose of Versilles and Utena, as well as in the prevalence of cress-dressing battle –babes throughout anime.

With all this said like many things here in the United States anime is sometimes erroneously referred to as a “genre,” it is in reality an art from that includes all he genres found in cinema or literature, from Heroic epics and romances to science fiction and comedy. Although Akira and Bugs Bunny share the same background anime is not as simple as American cartoon are made to be, anime deals with more profound themes, death, war, religion, abortion, homosexuality, economy; name it anime has it, and that is the beauty of anime, that there is some thing for every one, Ironically many people still regards it as kids cartoons, because of that fact that they are cartoons, this is because of American cartoons being directed to a younger audience, if Tom and Jerry started dealing with ethical problems such as the Vietnam war, maybe another story I would be writhing. Anime is more than just a cartoon it helps to understand another culture, and some time history and how things were at the time, such as in the movie Graveyard of Fireflies by Hayao Miyazaki, a window to history on the hardships that orphans in Japan had to endure during World War II. I could talk and talk about it, but to really understand it, the most important thing that some one must do, is just a simple thing, sit down in front of the TV and experience it, and then you would understand why people will go without food to buy the latest video export from Japan, why people who attend anime convention would dressed themselves only in an itsy-bitsy, tinny –weeny, yellow tiger-striped bikini like that worn by Lum in “Urusei Yatsura”.
Note: Despite Disney Studio’s vigorous denials (which still continue today), many American and Japanese fans remain convinced that Kimba was an important Influence (possibly subconscious) on the animation team that produced “The Lion King”

Reference

Solomon, Charles, Enchanted Drawings, The History of Animation. Wing Books.
New York, Avenel, New Jersey. 1994

Poitras, Gilles. Anime Essentials. Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, California, 2001.

Clements, Jonathan. McCarthy, Helen. The Anime Encyclopedia. Stone Bridge
Press, Berkeley, California, 2001.

Levi, Antonia. Samurai from Outer Space, Understanding Japanese Animation.
Open Court Publishing Co. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, 1996

Drazen, Patrick. Anime Explosion! The What? Why? & Wow of Japanese
Animation. Stone Bridge Press. Berkeley, California, 2003

Now it is time for presentations.

Like I said before, my name is Eddiel Carrete, I am a history major at the UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso), I love manga, some animes (I prefer manga over anime with some exceptions), I am new here, and from time to time I will be posting research papers that I will be doing on the Asian culture.

My goal with this papers is for fans of manga and anime to know the background of the stuff you are reading, for example how can you call yourself a fan if you do not acknowledge
the contributions of Walt Disney, say what you say about the guy, but if it wasn’t for him we might not be enjoying a lot of the series that we love today. But coming back to my point, I do this mostly for you people that want to get more in dept with this form of art.

With all this said, let me say something, I suck at grammar,spelling, and sentence construction, most of the spelling is done by the computer, I would try to proof read my work as much as I can, but have this in consideration when you are reading.

I will try to post a research at least once a month, take in consideration I am a senior, I have to work, do homework and all that fun stuff (sarcasm), and that the material at my library is really limited, so if you know or notice something that I got wrong, blame my sources, and not me(remember the material I use is really limited, and as much as I would like to buy books, I really don’t have the financial means). if I missed something fell free to ad it in the comments, but please source your material if it is possible, that way I can go and look for the book, web page, or what ever and use it for future references.

If you have some thought or comments, or know of really good books on history of manga, or books that you might think that I might be interested in, e-mail me at : eddielcarrete@yahoo.com

and again thank you for reading.