Anime is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of “animation”. The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons.
While the earliest known Japanese weight loss animation dates to 1917, and many original Japanese cartoons were produced in the ensuing decades, the characteristic anime style developed in the 1960s—notably with the work of Osamu Tezuka—and became known outside Japan in the 1980s.
Anime, like manga, has a large audience in Japan and recognition throughout the world. Distributors can release anime via television broadcasts, directly to video, or theatrically, as well as online.
Both hand-drawn and computer-animated anime exist. It is used in television series, films, video, video games, commercials, and internet-based releases, and represents most, if not all, genres of fiction. As the market for anime increased in Japan, it also gained popularity in East and Southeast Asia. Anime is currently popular in many different regions around the world.
Anime began at the start of the 20th century, when Japanese filmmakers experimented with the animation techniques also pioneered in France, Germany, the United States, and Russia. The oldest known anime in existence first screened in 1917 – a two-minute clip of a samurai trying to test a new sword on his target, only to suffer defeat. Early pioneers included Shimokawa Oten, Jun’ichi Kouchi, and Seitar? Kitayama.
By the 1930s animation became an alternative format of storytelling to the live-action industry in Japan. But it suffered competition from foreign producers and many animators, such as Nobur? ?fuji and Yasuji Murata still worked in cheaper cutout not cel animation, although with masterful results. Other creators, such as Kenz? Masaoka and Mitsuyo Seo, nonetheless made great strides in animation technique, especially with increasing help from a government using animation in education and propaganda. The first talkie anime was Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, produced by Masaoka in 1933. The first feature length animated film was Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors directed by Seo in 1945 with sponsorship by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The success of The Walt Disney Company’s 1937 feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs influenced Japanese animators. In the 1960s, manga artist and animator Osamu Tezuka adapted and simplified many Disney animation-techniques to reduce costs and to limit the number of frames in productions. He intended this as a temporary measure to allow him to produce material on a tight schedule with inexperienced animation-staff.
The 1970s saw a surge of growth in the popularity of manga – many of them later animated. The work of Osamu Tezuka drew particular attention: he has been called a “legend” and the “god of manga”. His work – and that of other pioneers in the field – inspired characteristics and genres that remain fundamental elements of anime today. The giant robot genre (known as “Mecha” outside Japan), for instance, took shape under Tezuka, developed into the Super Robot genre under Go Nagai and others, and was revolutionized at the end of the decade by Yoshiyuki Tomino who developed the Real Robot genre. Robot anime like the Gundam and The Super Dimension Fortress Macross series became instant classics in the 1980s, and the robot genre of anime is still one of the most common in Japan and worldwide today. In the 1980s, anime became more accepted in the mainstream in Japan (although less than manga), and experienced a boom in production. Following a few successful adaptations of anime in overseas markets in the 1980s, anime gained increased acceptance in those markets in the 1990s and even more at the turn of the 21st century.
Japanese write the English term “animation” in katakana as ??????? (anim?shon, pronounced [anime??o?]), and the term ??? (anime, pronounced [anime] ( listen) in Japanese) emerged in the 1970s as an abbreviation.[16] Others claim that the word derives from the French phrase dessin animé. Japanese-speakers use both the original and abbreviated forms interchangeably, but the shorter form occurs more commonly.
The pronunciation of anime in Japanese, [anime], differs significantly from the Standard English /?æn?me?/, which has different vowels and stress. (In Japanese each mora carries equal stress.) As with a few other Japanese words such as saké, Pokémon, and Kobo Abé, English-language texts sometimes spell anime as animé (as in French), with an acute accent over the final e, to cue the reader to pronounce the letter, not to leave it silent as English orthography might suggest.
Word usage
In Japan, the term anime does not specify an animation’s nation of origin or style; instead, it serves as a blanket term to refer to all forms of animation from around the world. English-language dictionaries define anime as “a Japanese style of motion-picture animation” or as “a style of animation developed in Japan”.
Non-Japanese works that borrow stylization from anime are commonly referred to as “anime-influenced animation” but it is not unusual for a viewer who does not know the country of origin of such material to refer to it as simply “anime”. Some works result from co-productions with non-Japanese companies, such as most of the traditionally animated Rankin/Bass works, the Cartoon Network and Production I.G series IGPX or ?ban Star-Racers; different viewers may or may not consider these anime.
In English, anime, when used as a common noun, normally functions as a mass noun (for example: “Do you watch anime?”, “How much anime have you collected?”). However, in casual usage the word also appears as a count noun. Anime can also be used as a suppletive adjective or classifier noun (“The anime Guyver is different from the movie Guyver”).
Synonyms
English-speakers occasionally refer to anime as “Japanimation”, but this term has fallen into disuse. “Japanimation” saw the most usage during the 1970s and 1980s, but the term “anime” supplanted it in the mid-1990s as the material became more widely known in English-speaking countries. In general, the term now only appears in nostalgic contexts. Since “anime” does not identify the country of origin in Japanese usage, “Japanimation” is used to distinguish Japanese work from that of the rest of the world.
In Japan, “manga” can refer to both animation and comics. Among English speakers, “manga” has the stricter meaning of “Japanese comics”, in parallel to the usage of “anime” in and outside of Japan. The term “ani-manga” is used to describe comics produced from animation cels.
