Origins of Anime

On Friday I went to look at books in the college liberty and I found a book that caught my attention. It was called NeoYork- Anime And Beyond. In the first few pages it explains the origins of Anime which I never hear of before.

According to this book the oldest Japanese animation in 1917 was only two minutes long and featured a samurai and his sword. Here is a video of some of the old Anime. The very first animation in 1917  is shown in this video at the start.

The book states that Anime only started to properly become popular in the 1930's and in 1937, through the success of the Disney movie 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' began the American's influence with japan's animators. 

In 1963 The Mushi Productions produced one of the first television series called the Mighty Atom, also known as Astro Boy in America. This series influenced fr more Japanese titles to enter the States.

From reading in the book I also found out that during the 1970's and 80's that Japanese animation was called Japanimation but was replaced by Anime in the 1990's. 

Star Wars influenced Japanese to have space themes in their animations such as well known series/films like Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell (and many more). Even now days I still hear people going on about those animations.






The image above is from Cowboy Bebop. The image to the left is from Ghost in the Shell and as written on it, the last image is from Dragon Ball Z.