Anime
by Joey Malbon
Japanese animation has had a vast influence on western media increasingly over the years. It started out as an experimental method of film making as an alternative to live action due to the location restrictions imposed by Japan being an island nation, and was pioneered by the godfather of Anime, Osamu Tezuka, creator of the Astro Boy series. Originally influenced by Betty Boop and old Mickey Mouse cartoons, the classic big-eye Anime look followed Tezuka´s early work.
Anime's introduction to western audiences took off in the 1960s when NBC first began to air the first English dubbed translations of Astro Boy. Other series such as Gigantor, Speed Racer and Battletech were also translated for NBC.
When the early anime series were first introduced to North American audiences, however, they were not promoted as being Japanese in origin. Almost all foreign names were stripped from the credits, leaving only the studio name and location intact. As television networks such as YTV and Nickelodeon began airing series such as Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball, they began promoting the shows as being distinctively Japanese.
Prior to this, though, came the animated feature length film Akira which was released to North American audiences in 1989. Contrary to the inferior reputation of Japanese animation (crude animation, bad dubbing and confusing translations), the film featured fluid animation and perfectly-synced dialogue, a first for an Anime film. Akira led the growing trend towards the general acceptance of Japanese animation as a viable form of entertainment in the west.
The popularity of Anime in western culture has grown since then to the point that Hayao Miyazaki's film Spirited Away won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature against five other films, and his subsequent film Howl´s Moving Castle was nominated three years later. Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have been receiving major attention in the last few years though.
Hayao Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli in 1985 along with his colleague Isao Takahata. The studio's first movies were immensely popular in Japan and films such as My Neighbour Totoro and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind became cult classics overseas. The studio's big break came in 1999 with the release of Princess Mononoke. The film was translated by comic book artist and novelist Neil Gaiman and featured an all-star cast including Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thorton and Gillian Anderson and was one of Roger Ebert's top 10 films of 1999. After the release of Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli gained even more popularity after giving the Walt Disney Corporation the video distribution rights to its films in North America.
The influence of anime in western animation can now be seen on almost every Saturday morning cartoon. Even American staples such as Looney Tunes have taken elements of the Japanese animation style in its most recent incarnations, and now anime, which was once following in the footsteps of American animation, is now on the medium's cutting edge.
Sources
List of Ebert's Top 10 Films. http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/ebert.html">
Anime. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime
Studio Ghibli. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli
Akira. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29