ANIME (アニメ)

Hi guys! Welcome back to our blog! Today I’d like  to talk about anime as I am a real fan of everything Japanese. But what are anime? Are they just cartoons for children?

I’ll immediately start by saying that the word anime  is the abbreviation of animeshon (animation in Japanese). They are the animation of stories published first as  manga, they are adaptations of comic books, as it happens when a novel or a saga become movies or TV series. Obviously it is not copied but is adapted, both in the representation of the scenes and in the dialogue.

Anime are catalogued in numerous genres and subgenres, as it is the case for manga, depending on the topics covered and the public for which they are intended.

The main kinds are the following:

•  Kodomo - for children up to 10 years;
• Shōjo - for girls aged 10  or older ;
• Shōnen - for children aged 10 or older;
• Seinen - for men over 18;
•  Josei (or Redīsu, from English ladies) - for a female audience aged 18 and over.

I want to emphasize that anime are not simple Japanese cartoons for children, as mentioned above there are different genres and they are not always suitable for the vision of children. Most of them deal with issues that are not easy for children to understand but also current, historical, life and other topics.

Their origin dates back to the Edo period,  when some painters reproduced details of animated movements through a sort of magic lantern.

In 1914 they began experimenting with some rudimentary animation techniques such as photographing in sequence drawings made with chalk on a blackboard.

 In 1932 there was the first production of anime with speech and sound, Chikara to onna no yononaka (力 と 女 の 世 中).

Between 1917 and 1945 at least 400 animation films were made, of which, due to earthquakes, bombings and government censorship, very little remains.

On 1 January 1963 there was the broadcast of the first episode of the first black and white anime of Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy). This date is considered to be the birth of the modern Japanese animation industry. Until the 80s we will talk about a true Anime Boom followed by the explosion of the home video market destined for Original Anime Video (OAV), officially born in 1983.

Between the 80s and 90s, with the increase in the production of video games the production of anime decreases a bit,  but in 1995 will be anime Shin Seiki Evangelion (Neon Genesis Evangelion) by Hideaki Anno to find an effective response to the  crisis of ideas and  to bring anime back to popularity.

Akira