The History of animation from Japan It is without a doubt that one of the biggest havens for animators of all kind as been Japan. Though most people dismiss it as cheap and poorly drawn pornography, they fail to actually see the real depth of which animation from Japan can really do. Animation in Japan started off similar to the way North America started out. The Japanese had run many "war-time" cartoons during the early stages of World War 2. Some of them involved cute Japanese soldiers attacking North American animated characters such as Popeye. Despite the World War 2, the Japanese had managed to produce a feature length film called Mamotaro's Divine Sea Warriors, which was a 70-minute movie that portrayed the Japanese army as cute bunnies and puppies destorying the ogre-like British army. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the film was still around, but North American soldiers had ordered the film to be burned due to it's racial comments against North America and the British. However, animation in Japan was far from being dead. The Hiroshima bomb was actually a blessing in disguise for most animators. One of the animators who benefitted from this the most was Osamu Tezuka, who created the first Japanese animated TV series called Astro Boy. Tezuka became one of the famous animators ever and even worked on some of the Disney comics. After the success of Astro Boy came the next big TV series. It was called Iron Man 28 or Gigantor as it was known in North America. Both Japan and North America got to watch these two brilliant series, but since NBC lost interest after Gigantor, animation imported over from Japan was be on hold. During the 1970's, many new ideas were popping up for new animation. The most successful was Space Battleship Yamato created by Leiji Matsumoto. Matsumoto's TV series became incredibly popular and spawned into many movies the shattered Japanese box office records. The 1970's also gave birth to the James-Bond-esque TV series, Lupin the Third, based on a French novel. Also, during the late 1970's, the giant robot genre had started up. Some were good and others failed miserably, but cream of the crop was the TV series Mobile Suit Gundam. Gundam's political approach to the giant robot genre was a fresh change. Due to the boom in Japanese animation titles, North America once again opened it's doors and released Space Battleship Yamato and Gatchaman onto American television as Starblazers and Battle of the Planets. Both of these ventures flopped, but it wasn't over yet. In 1980, a company called Jim Terry collected five animated series from Japan and put them on television as a five-block week of animated programming. Meanwhile, Japan was entering a new golden age. Many new ideas were still popping up. Gundam continued to prosper thanks to it's compilation movies and the Space Battleship Yamato saga was far from over. One of the highlights from the early 1980's was the TV series Macross. A company in America called Harmony Gold took notice of this and decided to produce it for an American market. They eventually spliced it together with two series called Southern Cross and Mospeda to create the legendary TV series known today as Robotech. In the wake of Robotech, Orion Entertainment took notice of Japanese animation as well. They worked together with a sub-division of Harmony Gold called Streamline Productions to bring some Japanese animated films to America. Orion wanted to show that t hey weren't afraid of this type of animation, so they brough some of the more explicit works over from Japan such as Wicked City and Doomed Megalopolis. However, the crowning achievement of Japanese animation in the 1980's was the hit movie AKIRA. AKIRA did well both in Japan and America and attracted more people to Japanese animation. In the early 1990's, animation in Japan sort of fell into a depression. Japan now had four long-running TV series that were hogging most of the budget for animation. These series were Dragonball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Ranma 1\2 and Sailor Moon. To some, that is the only animation they can actually remember from the early 90's. However, Hayao Miyazaki had a great success with his new movies Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. By 1995, the four series had eventually dried up and animation good finally move forward. To get the ball rolling, Gainax studios produced the fan-favorite Neon Genesis Evangelion. This series has raised huge debates among anime fans. After Evangelion, animation only got better from that point on. By this time, many film companies were already established in America that were designed for the soul purpose of bringing animation over to America. Though the majority of it went straight to video, animation from Japan still got on TV thanks to stations like Cartoon Network and Fox Family. The world of Japanese animation is large and vast. There are way too many titles for one to just base it on a viewing a few films. Japanese animation has remained as a staple in international film and always will. Plus, Japan is still chugging out animated series and movies to this very day. So what new direction will Japanese animation take in the future? We'll just have to see.