WHAT IS JAPANESE ANIMATION? 
           And Why is it Different From Animation in America? 
 
                         Article by Joe Vecchio 
 
    I'm sure many of you who go to conventions see video rooms showing 
Japanese Animation (or "Anime" - pronounced Ah-nee-may - , as it is
known in Japan, and by its American fans).  Sometimes these showings 
are part of the regular video shows, other times they are separate, 
being run by a local Anime fan club.  But how many of you know 
anything about Anime?  How many of you are aware of its scope in 
Japan, and the vast number of American fans it has?  Most likely you 
are aware of the many "Giant Robot" shows that are seemingly so 
prevalent among Anime fans here, but that it just the tip of the 
iceberg compared to the tremendous amounts of Anime, on all subject 
matters, to be found in Japan. 
    Anime got its start in post-WWII Japan with the emergence of one 
Osama Tezuka, a very popular and talented comic-book (or "Manga")
artist, who was a great admirer of Walt Disney.  Back then, of course, 
American animation was king, with Disney, Fleischer, Warner Bros., 
and MGM all having creative and talented animation studios running 
full-force. 
    Microscopic in comparison, the Anime industry started by Mr. 
Tezuka began picking up momentum, as other artists aspired to similar 
fame.  By the late 1950's, it was obvious that Anime was getting 
bigger and better, while the American industries were showing signs of 
slowing, due to increased censorship towards what was still primarily 
considered to be a "children's medium", and the increasing expense of 
making domestic animated films.  In the early 1960's, with television 
really beginning to come into its own, the bottom simply fell out of 
the American animation market.  Cartoons were relegated to the 
Saturday morning time slot, and there they would remain, vehicles of 
selling toys and cereals.  Anime, meanwhile, continued a trend of 
tremendous growth that has only recently begun to show signs of slowing 
ever so slightly. 
    Why did the Anime market escape the death of American animation in 
the sixties?  The biggest reason, I would think, was financial.  With the 
cheaper labor involved, Anime was less expensive to produce.  But another, 
highly prominent reason, was diversification.  American animation simply 
never evolved from its elevated creative points in the forties and 
fifties.  After the beautifully inspired movie "Fantasia", Disney 
simply continued with its previous fare of fairy-tales and children's 
stories.  While they were still excellently animated, they were pretty 
much all the same.  The other studios also did nothing to grow, 
preferring to stick with what they had been doing for all those years. 
And when television hit the scene, the death-knell rang to expensive 
fully-animated movies. 
    In Japan, meanwhile, television was taken full advantage of, and 
once more Tezuka was the first to jump on the bandwagon.  His 
"Tetsuwan Atomu" ("The Mighty Atom", known here in America as 
"Astro-Boy"), the first fully-animated television show in Japan, was a 
huge success, and triggered a boom in animated television series.  By 
the late 1960's Anime had outstripped its American and European 
counterparts in both quality and quantity.  The industry, being less 
censored and, for the most part, more respected as an art form than in 
America, was not banished to one time slot.  And the subject matter was 
as diverse as you can find in any medium, from children's shows to 
purely "adult" fare.  From light-entertainment sitcoms to gritty, 
realistic adventures and dramas.  And, of course, science-fiction and 
fantasy abounded as well. 
    Through the 1970's different shows perhaps numbering in the 
thousands were aired.  Many of these, of course, were adapted from 
comics, but even when they were, the animation stayed loyal to the 
original, and in some cases even enhanced it. 
    Sex and violence are more prevalent in Anime than in American 
animation, and while there are cases of gratuitous amounts of either 
in Anime, for the most part it is done within the context of 
the show.  Even children's shows contain occasional nudity, but it 
is the kind a child might expect to see - someone taking a bath or a 
disobedient child getting spanked.  The sole law regarding this in 
Japan is one that disallows the showing of pubic hair, but this law is 
not enforced with great regularity.  Creators are generally left to 
censor themselves, and while there are those who might be deemed to be 
taking advantage of it, for the most part the creators know what story 
they want to tell and, as a rule, don't go out of their way to include 
something that might not fit into the context of their plot.  They 
were being creative rather than exploitive. 
    In America most animation IS exploitive - exploitive in terms of 
being there to sell something.  Of course this is more true of the 
typical Saturday morning fare than full-length features such as what 
comes out of the studios of Disney or Don Bluth.  It's not that 
American creators are incapable of being as creative, its just that 
not many are willing to give them a chance.  And even within certain 
standards we still produced several respectable animation examples.  I 
challenge anyone to say Jay Ward's work (primarily "Bullwinkle") was
for children, with its veiled attacks on society and government (in fact
I never liked Bullwinkle as a child.  It is only within the last ten 
years or so that I discovered how wonderfully witty and well-written 
those shows were). 
    Even some American cartoons which I often ridicule have their 
occasional merits.  The first season of "Scooby-Doo: Where are You?", 
as a simple mystery with slight comedic overtones, was at least 
watchable compared to the inane standards that many Saturday morning 
cartoons have set for themselves (how can we forget, though we wish we
could, such bombs as "Fred and Barney Meet the Schmoo"?).  Therefore 
it was a surprise to many of us to see that on the other side of the 
Pacific things were a little different and, with the advent of video 
tapes, it wasn't long before American fans were to learn this. 
    Anime fandom in America possibly began with the formation of the 
Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, a splinter group of the Los Angeles 
Science Fiction Society.  It was the first, possibly the only, 
national Anime club in America, with chapters as far apart as New York 
and Misawa, Japan (located on the Misawa Air Force Base).  Unfortunately, 
it disintegrated because of the many problems of organizing so large a 
federation.  And, typically, the old demon of fan-politics reared its 
ugly head.  The C/FO, however, made enough people aware of the existence 
of Anime to keep it going to this day (several independent, nonsocialist 
chapters are still in existence).  In fact, with the translation of several 
Japanese comics, Anime fandom is undergoing a stateside boom at present. 
    Of course, I am sure many of you have seen Anime without being 
aware of it.  Examples of Anime that have been translated for the 
American TV market are:  "Astro-Boy" ("The Mighty Atom"), "Speed Racer" 
("Mach Go! Go! Go!"), "Star Blazers" ("Space Cruiser Yamato"),
"Robotech" (three different series combined - "Macross", "The Super
Dimension Calvalry, Southern Cross", and "Genesis Climber Mospeada"). 
There are quite a few others and more are being released here in America. 
In fact, many fan organizations have taken to subtitling their own Anime. 
Businesses such as AnimEigo, Streamline Pictures, and U.S. Renditions 
(a subsidiary of Books Nippon) are also getting into the act, subtitling 
or dubbing movies, television shows, and OVA's ("Original Video Animation", 
a recent development in Japan - individual animated shows or series that 
are released as rental tapes only, and do not appear in theaters or on 
television). 
    To sum up, Japanese animation, in my opinion, is the way animation 
SHOULD be, the way it never developed here for many reasons.  As 
long as they keep putting out a quality product Anime fans will be 
there.  Those of us even slightly in the know about how the American 
animation industry operates aren't holding our breaths waiting for change.