Anime Boredom - Evolution of Anime anime/manga article

Competitions

Affiliates

Evolution of Anime

Anime is easily becoming of the most popular forms of entertainment around the world. The main reason most people are attracted to this form of animation is for it's unique design. But where exactly did it come from? Did it just fall out of the sky? Many people love the various drawing styles of animation and to some extent there has been a standard to it. Yet few are actually aware of it's origin.

I'm sure most of you remember Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy. During his early years, before the dropping of the atomic bomb, Tezuka was an animator for Disney. He loved to draw and it became his one goal in life to become a better animator. The problem was Tezuka was pretty much saddled with both Disney and Japan. Disney would only do short stories that were mainly just for short humorous viewings whereas the Japanese government would only be supporting crude war-time cartoons. Tezuka was in a dillema, until the A-Bomb was dropped on Japan. This may sound cynical, but the dropping of the A-Bomb could be considered the Big Bang Theory of anime.

After the United States occupied Japan for awhile after the war, Tezuka was free to animate. He quickly started up his own animation studio called Tezuka productions. First, Osamu Tezuka had to come up with a design. He basically took some of the designs used by Disney and Max Fliecher and remolded them only slightly so you could tell the difference. Noses were drawn just a bit smaller due to the fact that not much emotion came out of such a part of the body. The eyes were made a tad bigger to show more emotion from the characters. Soon other artist would contribute their perception of their own vision of anime shuch as Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009) and Go Nagai (Mazinger Z).

However, it was Leiji Matsumoto's style that marked a dramatic change in the anime style. He drew the male character pretty similar to Tezuka and Shotaro, but smoothed out the noses on a few characters. It was his female designs that attracted so much attention, though. He said he based the design off of a French singer. The style was that she have long hair, thick eyelashes, thin neck and arms, slender fingers and a trigangular jaw shape. This new style fuled most anime artists through the 70's to create new and more innovative styles.

Eventually, by the early 1980's, Japan arrived at a standard character design of animation with the show Macross in which all human characters were made to look as much like humans as possible. Then, finally, in the late 1980's, Otomo Katsuhiro hit the nail on the head by drawing all his characters to match realistic figures in Japan. Perhaps this style was a little bit too real. One thing animators have to realize when making an animated film is that as a piece of animation there are no limitations to what can be achieved through this medium. Thus, Rumiko Takahashi came up with a style that could still be true to life, yet still look and act like a piece of animated imagination. Her success with her manga and TV series of Ranma 1\2 became the standard for anime as the 80's came to a close.

During the early 1990's, Takahashi's design caused quite an uproar and everyone wanted to copy this style. The only problem was there were too many who wanted to make animation after the success of Ranma and Akira. Thus, the 1990's became known as anime cash crunch period. During this time, Yu Yu Hakusho, Ranma 1\2, Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon were all being animated at the same time with more movies and OAV ideas piling in. Since the four shows were already taking a good portion of the animation budget, many shows were forced to make limited animation. Limited animation had existed back in the early days, but now it had to be rationed even more. Dirty cells had to be used and multiple animation studio were called in to help. Basically, anyone who could draw and would work for very little (sometimes just for the heck of it) would get thier names in the credits. This cash crunch did not end until about 1996 when Gundam Wing and Evangelion finished off the fiasco.

Everyone pretty much followed Gundam Wing and Evangelion's designs after this point. They were both sexy, serious and humorous all at the same time. Thus, animators stuck to what worked and what bailed anime out of the cash crunch. Still, there are a few anime designers who strive for more original designs such as Peter Chung for his original designs on Alexander Senki and Matriculated (Animatrix). It should be made clear there is no one way to draw anime. There are a variety of styles. I'm seeing Rumiko Takahashi's design as the most popular among them all because of it's beauty and cuteness in the design which lures in both male and female artists. Keep in mind that not all anime looks alike. You can understand now why I don't really approve of the phrase "anime-style".