Although Japanese anime seemingly appeared on the scene out of nowhere, it has actually been around for many years.
Japanese anime has a pretty old history, in fact. The anime itself began through manga that began to emerge in Japan in the 19th century. The first manga and the ideology behind today’s manga was first conceived by a Japanese artist named Hokusai. Hokusai’s manga was a collection of sketches, and as time passed, more and more artists took Hokusai’s idea and expanded it. A new style of drawing soon emerged: the style moved away from ‘sketches’ and into thick lines and light colors.
However, the stories remained as fantastic as ever: the manga at this point frequently involved spaceships, mythical creatures, superheroes, gods, dragons, and other fantastic things.
In the early 1990s, manga began its expansion into Western culture. Its distribution gradually spread at first, with very few manga-style comics available in Western countries. But shortly after this, the world of Japanese anime and animation was ready to see a big bang.
Eventually, manga was adopted by now ‘big name’ companies like Bandai, and the ‘wacky’ ideas that came with traditional manga made their way into mainstream Western society. It is a fact that in 1993, the manga and anime industry was worth just a few thousand dollars, and that 10 years later the industry went from this poor figure to having a value of just over 100 million dollars.
The reason for this huge increase in revenue was because anime and manga were formally adopted by western society. Popular TV shows like Power Rangers (I’m sure we’ve ALL heard of them at some point) were hugely successful. Power Rangers is a perfect example of how anime ideology spread through Western society – the show itself was broadcast throughout Europe, Canada, the United States, and Japan.
Of course, shows like Power Rangers weren’t anime in the traditional sense, but it’s pretty obvious that there is a link between the things that are featured on these TV shows and the things that are still found in traditional anime.
Since then, we’ve seen many more traditional (actually animated) anime make their way into the Western world. Essentially, the non-animated anime paved the way for the traditional guy to come in and earn a small fortune. Have you heard of Dragon Ball? How about Gundam or Hamtaro? If you haven’t, where have you been these last few years 🙂
Animated shows like the ones above are practically household names in the west now, which only goes to show the huge explosion that the anime industry produced. In 20 years, the anime industry in the West has gone from being worth thousands of dollars to being worth several million.