We love Anime. We stay tuned to several anime series. We have our list of favorite anime characters. We collect anime stuff, and label ourselves as anime fans. We’ve talked about particular anime series, movies, and characters. So why don’t we talk about anime in general this time. Let’s learn a few things about it’s history, the words “anime” and “manga”, and what separates them from other form of Arts and Entertainment.

Looking back at its history
The origin and early influence of manga traces back in the 18th century when picture books labeled as manga, made by various artists, were published. Later on, it developed to a mixture of traditional style and foreign arts. It occured when Japan started importing foreign artists to train Japanese art students. During the World War II, Dr. Osamu Tezuka introduced the story-telling comic format in Japan that is the pattern for most modern manga in publication today. He stated his own production company, Mushi Studios, in 1961. Later on, some of Dr. Tezuka’s works were animated
including Tetsuwan Atom (more popularly known as Astro Boy), which gave birth to animated series in Japan we often refer to as Anime.

The terms “anime” and “manga”
For those who are not familiar, they sometimes tend to interchange the use of the terms “anime” and “manga”. In Japan, the word “anime” is actually a shortened word for “animation” that refers to all forms of animation even those which did not originate from their country. The same thing goes for the word “manga” which used by Japanese to refer to comics. The word literally translates to “random pictures”. To us from different countries outside of Japan, we tend to use these words as labels for Japanese animation and comics.

Conventional styles
One of the distinguishing factor in manga and Japanese animation is the presence of conventional styles such as exaggerated human depiction (large eyes, tiny nose and mouth, spikey hair, and others). Although these features are identifiable to anime, it is inspired by American cartoons as well like Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters. Another thing that I noticed about Anime series is that high pitch in the voices of the main characters. Some even use female voice for the main characters even though they are male. Some good examples are Goku and Gohan from the anime series, Dragon Ball Z. The voice for these two heroes were played by Masako Nozawa who is a female. Anime and manga characters also have a unique way of expressing emotions like glittering eyes to represent happiness and joy. We often see huge sweat drops whenever a character is embarrassed. Sometimes, we also see abstract backgrounds in various scenes to emphasize the emotions of the characters.

There are a lot more styles unique in Japanese animation and comics that it is worth writing a separate article focusing on that. Although these styles may not be all present, it is most likely that one particlular anime or manga will exhibit one or more of these conventional styles.

My goal in writing this article is to simply give us a quick look at the history and some facts about our favorite form of arts and entertainment. There’s a lot more we can learn by surfing the net, reading books and magazines, or by simply observing and studying our collection of anime videos and manga.

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Category: Animation

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