Anime... Not another cartoon - More History Part 2
May 16 '01 (Updated May 28 '01)
The Bottom Line Further developing the history of anime in the US and some of its cultural points. Part 2 of 3 (I had to add another part because this is too long!).
Now, in my last article, I left off with the two events that I thought that brought anime more into the mainstream US culture. The quick recap of Part I is the preconceptions of the terms cartoon and anime within animation and anime's development in the US during the 70s and 80s. Cut and paste the link below for see the full Part I article.
http://yusakugo.epinions.com/content_1494065284
As I wrote the article, I realized how much I felt I needed to say about this topic and had to break it up into parts... otherwise, all of you would be reading a huge novel instead of an easy to digest essay. As I continue writing this, I am realizing that this is probably going to be a three parter now (and I hope not much more) for this particular topic. I'll continue elaborating on US anime history and events and part 3 will show the more recent trends and genres that exist as well as overlap.
Starting from the last points and backing up a few years
I mentioned the two events of the anime boom in the 1990s in the US. Now I just want to go a bit before the first event, which I timed at the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Prior to this, we have anime starting a slow acceptance into the mainstream... video stores started creating a small section of anime with a small selection of more acceptable anime to the public eye. In the 80s, anime was thought of as highly erotic animation by the mainstream (more popular VHS titles consisted of Urotsukidoji and La Blue Girl among others). However, the flashes of adult situations and nudity appeared in other titles. BubbleGum Crisis by AnimEigo certainly was more of a team adventure/heroes with high tech equipment in post-earthquake Tokyo in the year 2032. One of the main characters (and the most popular one) in this series was Priss. In a couple of episodes, while she had to don the bodysuit before getting into her hardsuit, Priss was drawn in full frontal nudity for like 1-2 seconds. I remember reading newsgroups and mailing lists of anime with whole topics devoted to this 2 seconds of the episode... even though the nudity had no impact on any part of the episode or the series...
Editor's note: you may hear of the term fanservice... this usually relates to a manga or anime showing either nudity or a sexually suggestive pose usually for no reason. This term is also often applied when female characters' panties are shown and the suggestion that female characters possess abnormally large breasts even without a highly suggestive sexual pose.
Other official releases in the 80s included 3x3 Eyes, Fist of the North Star, Devilman, Vampire Princess Miyu the OAV series. Many of these series really used nudity for any reason... a few showed a few seconds (Fist of the North Star, character Julia tears off all her clothes of finery to regarb in more ragged clothes... the clothes she wore before she was torn away from her beloved Kenshiro by Shin. This more symbolized her rejection of all the finery and riches granted to her forcibly by Shin and her desire to return to Kenshiro and a lifestyle she was much happier in.) Later 1980s, Viz communications and Pioneer entered the fray. Ranma 1/2 was an odd mix of fighting, situational/relationship comedy, and magical/mystical situations. Often in Ranma 1/2, the main character Ranma was shown in full frontal nudity. However, it was not done so much to present a sexual situation as it showed the circumstances of the character. Ranma is a boy who went to China with his father to further their martial arts training... However, because his dad is an idiot (really!), they wind up training on a cursed Chinese training ground with many pools of water. Ranma fell into the pool where a young girl drowned... so when hit by cold water, he turns into a buxom redhead. Hot water returns him to his original male form. His father turns into a panda by the way. Pioneer had started releasing animation like Moldiver and Tenchi Muyo! No Need for Tenchi! Most of the nudity or sexually suggestive situations shown in Tenchi Muyo were within the running plotlines of the entire series (Since all the females in the series were attracted to Tenchi... the main male character).
More Editor's notes: you might be wondering about the difference between TV series, OVA/OAV, and movies/theatrical releases. The TV series were episodes shown on TV... they usually had worse animation than OVA/OAVs and movie/theatrical releases but could run many seasons on Japanese TV. TV series could run as short as 12-18 episodes (about 1 TV season) or run 100+ (even close to 200 or more) episodes (like Ranma... or more familar to most, DragonBall Z and Sailor Moon) during its entire run. An OVA/OAV stands for Original Video Animation... i.e. only released on VHS/DVD/LD and not shown in theaters or TV. These animations were usually done with much more care than TV series and could rival theatrical releases. Theatrical releases were usually the big budget all out anime flicks like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Princess Mononoke, Perfect Blue, Spriggan, etc... Usually you would find superb animation and more recently computer generated animation in these. Note that in the late 1990s and 2000s, things have changed considerably... which I'll get to later.
Other animes were horribly edited... even to the point of deleting large portions of the movie and dubbing the movie without regarding the original plot. See the video Warriors of the Wind... this was editted from the original movie Nausicaa from the Valley of the Wind. The original was a show of the balance between humans and nature as well as technology and nature. It could be called an enviromentalist film to some degree. The larged edited movie "Warriors of the Wind" took mostly the war and battle scenes of Nausicaa and was dubbed over with new lines that didn't appear in the original. To fans of Miyazaki's work, this was utter blasphemy to the more gentle and deeper meaning of Nausicaa, while first time viewers thought the movie just plained sucked... Another example of butchering by way of editing also involved changing references to Shinto religion to witchcraft and magic... as done in a non-AnimEigo translated Urasei Yatsura movie.
About mid-1990s (I forget exactly what year) ADV released subtitled and dubbed versions of Neon Genesis Evangelion. This series became the biggest hit in sales and popularity at that time in the US. It would inspire many other series and encourage so many rip-off animes since its release. This basically changed the face of the US anime industry in a few short months. ADV was able to obtain the rights of many different anime series (although they didn't do much with these rights until several years later) and leapfrogged ADV to the top anime publisher at the time. Viz was having moderate sales with Ranma and Pioneer also doing fairly well due to Tenchi Muyo. To AnimEigo, it was a huge blow to a company that served its fan base rather loyally. In fact, AnimEigo never really recovered in the anime scene. This was due to AnimEigo inability to acquire new and popular anime series as well as AnimEigo's president's (Robert Woodhead) devotion (both financially and manpower-wise) to an anime called Urasei Yatsura (I believe that what the spelling... it's been so long), which wouldn't gather many fans except the hard-core. AnimEigo is currently moving all their old titles to DVD and has survived mostly on translating and releasing dubbed and subtitled versions of old Japanese Samurai flicks and TV series. Orion and Streamline more or less disappeared. Manga Vision was formed consisting of titles from these two companies. US Manga Corps also weakened considerably.
As much as I didn't like ADV short and at time inaccurrate translations... I feel that ADV is responsible for releasing many of the quality anime titles during this time while enlarging the viewing audience more than any other publisher at this time. Dubbing of videos was generally terrible... however, only the hard core or serious anime fans bought the more expensive subtitled versions of US released anime. Without this event, I doubt that DragonBall Z and Sailor Moon would have gotten any shot on network TV or Cartoon Network just a few years ago. The preconception of anime as just lewd and erotic animation was beginning to be dismissed by the public.
During the mid- to late-1990s and 2000, many titles were released and Bandai also entered the anime scene as well as Urban Vision, HyperWerks (I believe this was a division of US Manga Corps but I don't remember now), and Software Sculptors among others. US released anime doubled and even tripled in selection during this time.
In the late 1990s, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, and DragonBall Z were shown on network TV on channels that would later be named Fox, the WB, and UPN. However, in most parts of the country, they were not shown in the 7-8 AM or 3-5 PM time slots... the prime youth viewing hours. They received time slots like 5:30 AM or 1 AM. No doubt that these three anime series failed horribly at these time slots. Cartoon Network picked up Sailor Moon and DragonBall Z not too long after their failure. These two series probably saved the failing Cartoon Network. Both of these shows were the biggest hits in the entire Cartoon Network lineup and tripled even quadrupled viewship in a just a couple of months. This would eventually lead to the current Toonami hours on Cartoon Network from 3PM to 6PM! and again from Midnight to 2AM.
There is another event that helped further anime into the US mainstream market. The creation of DVD. This format make anime much easier to access since buyers no longer had to decide whether they wanted the dubbed or subtitled version. Now you could have both. Generally, prices for anime DVD were comparable or better than the VHS verions of the same anime on an episode by episode basis. Affordable anime helped to boost anime base viewing audience here in the states.
Now with anime in more mainstream success especially with Cartoon Network's popular Toonami hours, anime has been allowed to grow and develop in the US on TV and the VHS/DVD world. However, anime has yet to make any serious mark in US theaters... even Princess Mononoke failed in such an attempt. Animation on the big screen is still dominated by Disney and it doesn't seem to change soon. The only future release that could possibly change this is not Pokemon... Pokemon has also done rather poorly on the big screen (as compared to its expectations... 1st movie did not break $100 million mark and third movie bared reached $30 million.) This movie might be Final Fantasy the movie. This will be a fully computer generated animation and although I don't know much about its plot... the fact that the PlayStation game series has so many fans may give this movie the best chance of establishing anime in the theater. The only other anime that had decent success in the theater was Akira more than 20 years ago.
As this is getting extremely long as well, I am making this a three part essay... I want to take the time to write about the various genres and some choice titles in these genres. Sorry about the extra part but... when you've been a fan of something for so long (I started in the early 1980s) many ideas pop up into your mind as you're writing... and I especially want to give a proper, accurate history of anime. Part three will deals mostly with genres and titles... and answer of of the questions I've been emailed or seen in the comments section.
Editor's note: some people may have heard of the term Otaku and Hentai. Otaku refers to a serious animation fan in Japan... although I'm unsure what other references are associated with the term. Many people in the states felt that Otaku meant rabid fan who devoted most if not all of their life to anime. I consider myself an otaku in the sense that I love to watch and collect anime. I have over 120 DVDs of anime, over 400 VHS tapes, over 100 S-VHS tapes, 75+ Laserdiscs, 100 music CDs, and 50 CD-R with translated MPEG, Divx, and AVI video files. I do not make anime the center of my life. That's what my girlfriend, family, friends, and job as a physician is for. I keep a huge collection and love watching and figuring out the plot and details of anime series. Hentai has a rough translation of pervert. Hentai productions usually refer to the sexually explicit materials but not always.
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