Thursday, October 22, 2009
There are always reasons, but they may not be what you think.
With the knowledge of what the first anime's where that came to the United States, it becomes possible to find out why. Surprisingly enough, the answer to why anime came across to the U.S. is actually as simple as capitalism. After WW2, Japan's Economy was struggling to rebuild. For entertainment during this time period, the United States sent over many cartoons (pristine for the time, today, not so much) to help out. Japan, who had started making anime before the war, were having a hard time capturing the quality of the American Cartoons that were making the journey overseas. In 1957, Toei Animation Co. finally reached a quality level equal to American Cartoons with its first notable short, "Doodling Kitty". However, it wasn't till "Panda and the White Serpent", or "Hakujaden" in Japan (see post First in America, 10/21/2009) that Japanese Animation was popular. With it's popularity in Japan finally soaring, they released in to America to see how it will do. Seeing that it failed, they would stop releasing movies. However, this allowed manga writer, Tezuka, to become interested in American style workings. He would end up creating Japan's first TV animation studio and releasing with it, "Astro Boy." The reason for release in America with "Astro Boy" was the same as it was with the first movies. Basically to see how it would do. In the end, anime would rocket in popularity in both Japan and America, though in America would end up just having a craze for the science fiction genre.
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Wow, at first I wasn't sure if this would be an interesting topic but I'm totally hooked already by reading this first blog! The only problem is that I'm a little confused by the story. So Japan's economy was bad so the United States sent over American cartoonists to help out? Why were they "having a hard time capturing the quality of the American Cartoons"? This may need some more depth and explanation because I'm way confused. Also, it's not like you have to do this or anything, but it would be AWESOME if you put some pictures up. I wonder if you can have a couple pictures in your actual research essay? You should ask Greg because that would really help the paper I think. Again, this is a really interesting topic, but it would be good for you to explain the history a little better, and then maybe make the TV animation series a separate topic? One last thing, make sure you have at least one general question that you really want to answer, so that your paper has focus. I'm not sure if you've done that yet, but just keep that in mind. Awesome! :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I've never read any manga or really watched anime, but even so, I also think that this topic will be pretty interesting even though I don't have any previous experience. You seem to know quite a bit about it though. One question I have is whether your essay is going to be about anime on TV and in movies or about manga? One thing I think you might be able to incorporate into your paper is a personal experience maybe where you first were introduced to anime, or something like that. You also might look at why only the science fiction portion is popular in the U.S. Just a thought. Like I said before I don't really have any experience with anime so it'll be interesting to learn more about it.
ReplyDeleteTo start answering questions, Sambo: to give better light to your first question, "So Japan's economy was bad so the United States sent over American cartoonists to help out" one has to realize that during the end months of WW2, the US was Fire bombing Japan back to the stone ages in order to get Japan to surrender without Invading the main Islands of Japan (this would last many months before we finally dropped the atom bombs) the fire bombing completely wiped out the Japanese economy, including forced rations to the Japanese people. When the war was over, the US realized that Japan had no economy, so using something learned from the Great Depression, send over cartoons to post-war Japan to liven up the population. Because as the US had already learned, if the people are happy, they don't realize they live in terrible conditions.
ReplyDeleteYou are asking two main questions, as is stated in your blog description: why did Japanese anime come to the US, and has the US changed it at all? It seems to me that you have already answered your first question in your own mind: Why did anime cross the ocean? Capitalism. You are going to want to specify what you mean by that. What is the relationship between capitalism, the US, and Japan's struggling economy? Did they want to make money by using our system? Do you feel that we were somewhat responsible for their economic position? Those two questions may not be explicitly related to your topic but may get you headed in a specific direction. Also, it would be a great idea to parallel the coming of anime to America along with other things such as Japanese car brands. The whole business relationship between Japan and the United States, as well as the many corporate struggles that have ensued (such as small electronics companies being starved to death by strategically placed larger Japanese funded companies selling under-priced parts to defeat their competition- an excellent example of that struggle and a surprising victory over it is Micron), could shed light upon your question as to why Anime came here and how it managed to succeed. Also, its struggle to succeed and most likely intense corporate battles may have changed the face of anime as we know it. Also, the cultural differences between Americans and the Japanese will have been a factor, because I would guess that much has been changed to make anime marketable and attractive to Americans, as opposed to what is popular in Japan.
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