Anime ? The history of the amazing animations we know as anime



Animations and cartoons have always amused us, made us laugh with joy ? as kids and adults, alike. Cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Felix the cat have become timeless. As other evolving creations of man, even animation is going is vast evolution with Japanese ?anime? soaring in popularity, especially in the western countries. Transformers, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! ? These are some popular anime creations which have made a significant mark on people around the world.

Animation has always been popular in Japan with lots of them being done from 1920 onwards. Within a decade, by 1930, animation had become an indispensible part of the progressing Japanese film industry. However, the war and nationalistic propaganda moulded all the animations. All television releases and comics were used to strengthen political ideas. Soon Walt Disney's Fantasia inspired Mitsuyo Seo to create Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors ? an animation on Japan's fight for liberty. Slowly, animations started changing to their present form. Walt Disney was a great inspiration for all early animators and it would take a while before they abandoned these roots.

It was a passionate cartoonist and comic books seller, Tezuka Osamu, who is credited with the invention of the anime which is popular today. His first popular cartoon, Astroboy, was released in 1963 and since then, there has been no looking back. Slowly, variations started coming in and the immensely popular robots genre was introduced in anime, giving it a larger fan base. Apparently, the golden era of anime was the 1970's, when Space Battleship Yamamoto became an instant success. It paved way for original video animations known as OVAs. DVDs of these OVAs are selling faster than a fish takes to water these days.

Anime is a literal translation of animation in Japanese. American animation and Japanese anime (or japanimation) differ mainly when it comes to their storylines. Unlike the American style, which is mostly carefree and intended for light headed humour, anime has always been more intense and serious with emotional and deep characters adding movie-like elements to the animation.

Akira is one anime feature film which though bombed at the Japanese box-office, helped anime to become immensely popular in the west and United States. It is actually one of the many definitive anime features films or television serials which were to come up in the 1990's.These days, anime features on DVD have become a house hold item with successes such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pokemon and Dragon Ballz.