The Origin of Anime
It's truly amazing how many people into Anime today seem to think that it all started about a year before they got involved in the hobby. Many will, however, tell almost identical stories about dim childhood memories of (depending on how old they are) Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Marine Boy, Gigantor, Robotech, or Star Blazers. Others wandered into a comic shop and discovered to their utter amazement that there was an Akira MOVIE to go along with their comics. The real history of the medium is frequently chaotic and bizarre (as is the medium itself), and to cover it in depth would take hundreds of pages but that's not the function of this primer. My goal is merely to give you, Mr. Jennings, an idea of what happened and when. Significant events have been left out of this, and portions of the text presented here are based on rumor and conjecture. The event sequence is bunched up around the middle, and there are times when so many things are happening at once that it became difficult to limit the narrative to a half dozen threads or so. I feel that this does, however, give a reasonable account of the tumultuous history of this medium.
Shortly after the firestorm descended on Disney, the company took the position that it was largely unaware of Japanese Animation in general, and Tezuka in particular. Their animators, it was categorically stated, were not influenced at all during the production of their own King-of-the-Jungle lion film. That entire scenes were lifted from Tezuka "splash" panels were merely coincidence. It was therefore a bit of a reversal when shortly afterward Disney and Studio Ghibli announced that Miyazaki's back catalog of films would be distributed by Disney ... a company that was officially "unaware" of the medium. Strange, to say the least, eh? But what Dr. Tezuka is best remembered for, is his little robot boy and his sister (interestingly, Atomu and Uran ... atom and uranium). Some of his more experimental films like Broken Down Film, Legend of the Forest, and his epic series of films about a little white lion with black ears ... a series which shares many elements with a Disney film from a few years ago. The lion in the US version of the series was called Kimba ... although his original name was Simba. We'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but Disney steadfastly denies that anyone based their story on the Tezuka classic. Some in the industry find this not to be a defensible position.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Akira MOVIE, Evangelion Huge, Ages Japan, Star Blazers, Tetsuwan Atomu, Akira Anime, Nagasaki Hiroshima, Japanese Animation, maison ikkoku, urusei yatsura, astro boy, hi tori, television series, little robot boy, robot boy, osamu tezuka, version series, star blazers, tetsuwan atomu,
Approximate Word count = 2233
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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