The Historical Case of Anime in the USA

We can’t believe we’re saying this ALREADY but AniMAY is ending! But, before we go, we thought we would bring you one last episode of the month before we launch into June!

Our original idea for this episode was to talk about one of the first animes to gain success with American audiences: Speed Racer. But, as we had difficulty finding information on the show, we decided to make our topic a little broader. So, instead of focusing on just one TV show or movie, this week we are covering the history of Anime’s rise to popularity in The United States!

Anime has been around for a VERY long time. But, the art form didn’t find an audience in America until as late as the 1960s. Since the first wave of anime captured audiences' attention across the nation, its popularity has steadily increased. So, let’s learn about Anime’s influence and history in the USA.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF JAPANESE ANIMATION

We’ve been talking about Japanese anime all month, but we haven’t mentioned how it originated. We know that the first animated films started back in the early 1900s with movies like The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and Fantasmagorie. But, as we’ve discussed previously, the concept of animation pre-dates film.
In Japan, as well as around the world, there were several precursors to animated films. For example, Emakimono were scrolls used by storytellers as far back as the eleventh century. Similar to flipbooks, the scrolls simulated the movement of illustrations as storytellers unraveled them from right to left.
In the 17th Century, The Magic Lantern, invented by Dutch Astronomer Christiaan Huygens, was dazzling audiences all over the world, including Japan. This device used a candle and slides to project hand-painted images onto the wall. It was a prominent precursor to animation (and film in general) as the lantern also included rotating glass discs and levers to simulate movement. Users could crank the box, and suddenly there were moving pictures hundreds of years before the camera had been invented.
When we talk about the beginning of animation, we generally mention how the art form evolved in the US. But, Japanese animation began about the same time. The film Fantasmagorie from 1908 is widely considered to be the world’s first fully animated film. But in 2005, historians discovered four seconds of animation (about 50 frames) that they believe date back to 1907. It’s called Katsudō Shashin, because the film depicts a boy writing those words before tipping his hat. According to the Japanese animation historians that found the fragment, it’s the oldest animation in the world.
Besides the discovery in 2005, the oldest Japanese animation was created by Shimokawa Oten and released in 1917. From that point on, more and more animated shorts were distributed in Japan. Kouchi Jun’ichi was another pioneer that experimented with shadow effects, synchronized sound, and paper cutting. Kitayama Seitaro started working on his animation in 1915, which consisted of paintings on paper. He’s credited with being the first artist to manage a staff of animators, which allowed him to produce animation much faster. Unfortunately, almost all of his work, and much of the work of other early Japanese animators, was lost in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.
Animation in Japan caught on and became a popular form of art and entertainment. It’s even credited with lifting the spirit of the country as it attempted to rebuild after the great earthquake. Japanese animated films would continue to be produced over the course of the next forty years, but it wouldn’t be until the 1960s, with the popularity of television, that they would find large audiences in the US.

THE 1960S

Astro Boy (1963)
- While some Americans may think that Anime is completely separate from American culture, the truth is that Japanese animation has been influencing American film and TV for several decades. One of the biggest examples of this was the TV series Astro Boy in the 1960s.
- In 1951, cartoonist Osamu Tezuka created the first versions of the character Tetsuwan Atomu, or “Mighty Atom.” We all know him better as Astro Boy.
  - Astro Boy’s style was influenced by Disney animation, specifically Mickey Mouse.
- Tezuka created his own production company and made a 10-minute pilot of Mighty Atom to pitch to film studios. The pitch worked, and Mighty Atom premiered as Japan’s first animated weekly series on New Year's Day 1963.
- Astro Boy was incredibly influential. Many consider it to be the first Anime series, and some of the techniques that the animators used would influence the artists at American studios, like Hannah Barbara.
- Tezuka pitched the series to NBC executives, specifically Fred Ladd, who some credit as the person that brought anime to the United States. NBC bought rights to air the show, under certain conditions. For one, the show could not be altered and the original studio would receive credit. But, NBC did change the name of the character to Astro Boy and they added a catchy theme song.
  - Fred Ladd would later adapt another of Tezuka’s projects, Kimba the White Lion. Some believe this anime was the unofficial inspiration for The Lion King. A year after Astro Boy premiered in the US, Ladd also brought the series Gigantor.
- The series was the first Japanese show to be aired in the United States. The show would be rebooted in the 1980s and in 2003. America and China collaborated on a CGI reboot film of the series in 2009. While it received mixed reviews, many fans found it to be a good adaptation of the manga and series.
Speed Racer (1967)
- Astro Boy may have introduced American audiences to Anime, but the black-and-white show eventually fell to the wayside as more and more viewers started buying color televisions. A few years later in 1967, the anime Speed Racer became well-known to American audiences and would be shown on television for decades to come.
- Speed Racer began as a manga series called Mach GoGoGo by Tatsuo Yoshida. The syndication rights were acquired by syndicator Trans-Lux, an electronics manufacturer of all things. The renamed Speed Racer premiered on American television in the summer of 1967. In the series, the main character’s full name was Go Mifune, in homage to Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune. His name, Americanized, became Speed Racer.
  - His adventures centered on the powerful Mach 5 car, his girlfriend Trixie, his little brother Spritle, Spritle's pet chimpanzee Chim-Chim, and the mysterious Racer X.
- For American audiences, major editing was undertaken by producer Peter Fernandez, who not only wrote and directed the English-language version but also provided the voices of many of the characters, such as Racer X and Speed Racer himself. Fernandez was also responsible for rearranging the melody and lyrics of the show's theme, originally written and composed by Nobuyoshi Koshibe.
- These changes were meant to make the show more palatable for American audiences, but in some cases hurt the show stylistically. For example, the unmatched dubbing and frequent cuts made the show laughable to some audience members.
- Speed Racer was also adapted into a film, and it was just announced that it will get a brand new live-action series on Apple.

THE 1970S

Battle of the Planets (1978)
- In the 1970s, American interest in Japanese animation increased with even more vibrant series’. Many of these shows were themed in outer space, which allowed them to capitalize on the Star Wars craze that was sweeping the nation. One such show was Battle of the Planets.
- Battle of the Planets is the American adaptation of the Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972). Produced by Sandy Frank Entertainment, the American version of the show premiered in September of 1978. The show is known for its opening, which features a narrator reminiscent of 1960s science fiction.
- Just like Speed Racer, the American version of the show had to avoid showing graphic violence and other adult themes. Despite this, the show stayed faithful to the original story and characters. It was the most successful anime series to air in the US during the 1970s.
  - The show followed a team of five orphans who were trained from birth to battle the forces of evil from other planets.
  - The show was groundbreaking in the sense that it featured a lead female character that was also an engineer.
  - For some, the show also introduced the concept of gender fluidity with one of its characters, Zoltar.
- In 1986, Gatchaman was re-worked again in the US as G-Force: Guardians of Space by Turner Broadcasting, with a good deal of original content that was edited out of Battle of the Planets, put back in. It followed the plot of the original series much more faithfully than Battle of the Planets because of this. Although, Hoyt Curtin's original score was missing along with new voice acting. This version, however, was criticized by fans of both Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets, and never achieved the same level of popularity.
Star Blazers (1979)
- Star Blazers is an American series adaptation of the Japanese series Space Battleship Yamato (1974). Star Blazers was first broadcast in the United States in 1979 and was the first popular English-translated anime that had an overarching plot that required the episodes to be viewed in order. This paved the way for future plot-driven anime translations. It also dealt with somewhat more mature themes than other shows aimed at the same target audience.
  - The show followed a crew as they traveled to a distant planet to save earth from an alien attack.
- In 1977, before the debut of Star Blazers, the Japanese film Space Cruiser Yamato as it was known at the time, was dubbed into English and retitled Space Cruiser. This film was released in several countries but the American release was extremely limited, and eventually ended up airing on television in the Los Angeles area in 1978.
- Because of this, the Westchester Corporation saw the potential in Space Battleship Yamato as a children’s property (despite its mature content). They bought the rights to the first two seasons. Griffin-Bacal Advertising completed the dubbing and editing, while production and syndication were handled by Claster Television. The American studios removed and replaced the Japanese language elements such as series titles and scene captions. The series premiered in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 17, 1979, as part of the weekday show Captain Cosmic on KTVU 2. Star Blazers' initial broadcasts received high ratings, with many people crediting the show as sparking their love of anime.

THE 1980S

Voltron: Defender of the Universe (1984)
- While many of us in the US have heard of shows like Astro Boy and may have seen Speed Racer, Anime only started to become mainstream in America in the 1980s. The 1980s would later be known as the golden age of anime because this was an era when the fandoms began to grow. The invention of high-quality VHS tapes allowed more content to spread from Japan to other countries, making the art more accessible. When we think of 1980s anime, one TV show tends to stand out among the others. That show is Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
- While some consider Robotech to be the biggest and most influential anime show of the decade, Voltron was aimed at younger audiences and essentially paved the way for other mecha shows (notably Power Rangers). It was actually adapted from two different anime shows, BeastKing GoLion and Armoured Fleet Dairugger XV.
  - This was reportedly due to the fact that the US shows needed 65 episodes for syndication and Japanese shows were typically 52 episodes. So, they combined the shows to fill in the gap.
- World Event Productions was the studio responsible for bringing Voltron to the US. They reportedly approached Toei Animation (the original creators of the show) for the rights to a completely different anime. But, they got the rights to the two shows that would become Voltron because of translation issues.
- When the show premiered in 1984, many audience members didn’t realize that the show was recycled content. The show’s opening featured the voice of Peter Cullen, who famously voiced Optimus Prime from Transformers. The show follows a group of ordinary humans that battle the evil Emperor Zarkon by piloting mechanized lions that come together to form Voltron.
- The show was incredibly popular in its initial run and drove massive toy sales. But, the second version of the show left audiences unimpressed. Suddenly, Voltron was made up of various forms of transportation instead of giant lions, and there was an all-new cast of characters. The show lost its following. But, in the decades since, there have been several adaptations of the show, and its influence reached a lot of other robot-centric animation.

Robotech (1985)

This show is a strange beast. It is a science fiction show with 85 episodes produced by Harmony Gold USA in association with Tatsunoko Productions. What makes it so weird is that it was adapted from three original and distinct Japanese shows. Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA were all used to create what became Robotech.
Harmony Gold’s reasoning for combining these unrelated series was its decision to market Macross for American weekday syndication TV. This required a show to have a minimum of 65 episodes (5 episodes per week for 13 weeks). All three of the used shows had fewer than the requirement since they aired in Japan as weekly series. This combination resulted in a story that would span across three generations as mankind would fight in the three “Robotech Wars”
Robotech is often a polarizing subject amongst anime fans. Some look down on the show for its extensive edits to the source material such as westernizing character names and forging a connection between previously unrelated series. While supporters of the adaptation have pointed out that the weaving of the three series into a congruent whole required the reworking, and that it helped to maintain a slow but continuous rise of anime in the US.

THE 1990S

Many of the shows we’ve mentioned so far were given new names and were edited drastically when broadcast in America. Some even were conglomerates of multiple Japanese shows. By the 90s however, many shows would come to the US much closer to their original form, aside from being dubbed in English. Some censorship still happened, but for the most part, shows were no longer being heavily reworked or reinterpreted for American audiences. At this point, American audiences have been exposed to Japanese animation for thirty years, and this is when the art truly became mainstream.

Sailor Moon (1992)
- In 1991, Naoko Takeuchi published her manga about Usagi Tsukino, a middle school student who transforms into Sailor Moon, the moon princess, and commander of the Sailor Senshi, the leading female protagonists of Sailor Moon. With her team, The Sailor Scouts, she fights both supernatural challenges and average middle school issues.
- The manga took off, and by 1992 it was picked up as an anime called Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon in Japan. It was produced by Toei Animation and followed the manga closely, especially throughout the first season. Takeuchi used her personal experiences to inspire some of the storylines in the manga. One of the most notable examples is the theme of bullying throughout the manga and the show. Takeuchi has said that she intentionally made Sailor Moon an average girl instead of someone who naturally has a lot of power because she wanted other bullied middle school girls to identify with her.
  - Sailor Moon was incredibly inspirational to young girls around the world, and the characters are considered to be feminist icons. The concept of an entirely female team of powerful warriors was fairly new in media. The show also included positive representations of the LGBTQ+ community.
- Sailor Moon was also influential for its realistic depiction of Japan. Although the animation was not photorealistic, many famous Japanese landmarks and locations appeared in the show, grounding it in the real world and possibly starting the trend of fan pilgrimages to locations in anime.
- Sailor Moon remains to have a major following. The show ran in Japan for five years from 1992 to 1997 and had three full-length feature films, as well as five short films. Although the US adaptation was closer to the original anime than previous shows, there were some significant changes. Some episodes were left out of the English dub, and a couple of episodes were merged into one. The English dub also included a segment at the end called, “Sailor Says,” which highlighted the moral of the story.
Ghost in the Shell (1996)
- In 1989 Masamune Shirow wrote and illustrated a Japanese manga called Ghost in the Shell, about a female cybernetic agent.
- This manga inspired Mamoru Oshii to create the 1995 animated film that would become popular, not only in America but internationally as well. The film was dubbed and released in America on March 29th, 1996.
- In an article by Peter Suderman for Vox it was expressed that “Director Mamoru Oshii wanted a movie that portrayed the ‘influence and power of computers by looking at how that influence and power might evolve over time, and the film posits a near future in which humans have begun to merge with machines.”
- The film showed the art form in a different way that brought attention to the details. The blending of elaborate art, highly detailed science fiction, and adult themes and graphics. The film was even Not Rated.
- The film’s influence was so great that a film like The Matrix was inspired by it. It also
Dragon Ball Z (1996)
- This is technically the second show in the long Dragon Ball franchise, however, it was the series that landed the mainstream audience in America.
- The series aired in Japan on Fuji TV and was on all the way to January 1996 and was later dubbed for broadcast in at least 81 countries worldwide.
- In 1996, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for the release in North America, after canceling their initial dub of the original Dragon Ball halfway through the first season. Funimation's 1996 release was not the first broadcast in the United States, as some networks had already aired subtitled versions of the series in other languages.
- The initial English dub of Dragon Ball Z had mandated cuts to content and length, which reduced the first 67 episodes into 53. Most of the edits were done to tone down the dramatic parts and create a more kid-friendly feeling. Most notably references to death, sidestepped with phrases like "sent to the next dimension". It premiered in the United States in September of 1996, in first-run syndication, but halted production in 1998 after two seasons despite strong ratings. This was due to the scaling down of syndication operations, in order to focus on producing original material for the Fox Kids Network.
  - Reruns of the show would continue on Cartoon Network’s Toonami and they would be the ones to eventually order more episodes from Funimation. They would continue with new voices and score.
  - In 2005, Funimation began to re-dub episodes 1–67 with their in-house voice cast, including content originally cut. This is not the same version as Dragon Ball Z Kai, which would come out in 2009.

Up to and throughout the 90s, anime entered mainstream American media. Kids brought Sailor Moon lunch boxes to school, Speed Racer was airing on the fledgling Cartoon Network as late as the 90s, and by the time Power Rangers aired, many were comparing the show to Voltron. Because this episode was about anime's introduction and influence in America, we’re going to stop here in the 1990s for now. Throughout the 2000s and the 2010s, Anime continued to enthrall audiences all over the world. Here are just a few of those shows that we wish we had time to talk about:

THE 2000S TO NOW

Cowboy Bebop (2001)
FullMetal Alchemist (2004)
Naruto (2005)
Naruto Shippuden (2009)

Hunter X Hunter (2011)

Attack On Titan (2013)
My Hero Academia (2016)
Jujutsu Kaisen (2020)

Horimiya (2021)

Japanese Animation has had a far-reaching influence on animation across the globe, including in the United States. Anime is an art form filled with diverse styles, complex stories, and imaginative characters. We were happy to spend this month learning so much about Japanese Anime, and we hope we have inspired anyone that hasn’t had the pleasure to watch it, to give it a try. Although this month aniMAY be over, we’ll see you all June. ;)