A New Golden Age

By Mark McPherson
24th May 04

Some of you may not realize it, but you are all living through a golden age of anime in the U.S. A lot of stuff has happened is the last three years and we have been lucky enough to experience them.

To start with, we have the creation of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, an entire block devoted to mature animation. In 2000, there was only one anime, but now in 2003, we have already had 7 new anime shows premiere with more still on the way. And with the creation of the Anime Network, things only get better from their.

The success of anime in the early 21st century isn't just limited to television. Take Spirited Away for example. It got picked up by Disney and was released totally uncut into theaters. Plus, Spirited Away beat Disney's home-made Treasure Planet despite the fact that Spirited Away was only released in 400 theaters. To add to it's success, it's almost nominated for an Oscar. This will become the first anime to ever be nominated for an Oscar, but when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was released in the U.S. and got some Oscars, I knew that something like this would happen soon.

Finally, we come to reading-material. Were very lucky to have Newtype come to the U.S. in English. This is very helpful since now U.S. anime fans can keep up with what anime is now on in Japan and what new stuff is coming out both here and in Japan. Tokyopop isn't showing any signs of slowing down either. They've churned out so much manga in the last few years.

Needless to say I will never forget this decade even though it isn't even half over as of this writing. The 1970's got a taste, the 1980's got more involved, the 1990's started bringing anime to TV and video, but this decade is going to go down in history. Never forget that you are all now apart of anime history.

-- Mark McPherson 24th May 04