From Woodblock Prints to OAVs
A Topical Survey of Manga and Anime

I.   Introduction

In recent years, North America has seen Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime) rise from cult to popular culture status.  While examples of these Pacific imports have popped up in the mainstream over the past half-decade, only in the late 1990s did they begin to arrive on North American shores on a more frequent basis, retaining much more of their original content and cultural roots.  In their native Japan, however, manga and anime are nothing short of popular culture icons.

Of all the books and magazines actually sold in Japan in 1995, nearly 40 percent were manga.  In all, 2.3 billion manga books and magazines were published in Japan in 1995, and nearly 1.9 billion actually sold.  That breaks down to over 15 manga for every man, woman, and child in Japan at the time.  Between six and seven billion dollars were spent on manga by Japanese consumers that year, an annual expenditure of over $50 per person.  These statistics, as staggering as they are, do not include the millions of dojinshi (amateur-produced manga) sold or the popular practice of mawashi-yomi, which consists of one manga being passed around and read by many people (Schodt, 1996, 20).

Manga’s influence in Japan is vast.  Described as a type of “meta media,” manga generates countless spin-off products.  A popular manga title, which first appears serialized in a manga magazine, may be compiled into bound books and produced as an animated television series or movie.  Manga-inspired music CD’s, toys, stationery, video games, operas, novels, and live-action television shows and films are also common (Schodt, 1996, 20). 

Manga’s closest cousin, however, is anime.  Many anime titles are adapted from popular anime and the medium is quite popular.  Mononoke Hime [Princess Mononoke], a film by Japan’s premier animator, Hayao Miyazaki, is the highest-grossing domestic film in the country’s history and its second highest-grossing film overall.  To date, it has earned 150 million dollars in Japan, second only to Titanic (New York Daily News Service). 

Anime television and direct-to-video (OAV) productions reach millions of viewers.  Animated shows can be found on at all hours on Japanese television channels, even in prime time, depending on the target audience and content of the show.   Animated movies are shown in theaters and later distributed on video by a network of companies rivaling those of major North American corporations, such as Disney and Warner (Baricodi, etc., 8).

The popularity of manga and anime produce superstars not only of their characters, but also of their creators.  Miyazaki’s reputation worldwide rivals that of the late Walt Disney.  His Studio Ghibli has produced such critically-acclaimed films as Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa [Nausicaa From the Valley of the Wind] and Hotaru no Haka [Grave of The Fireflies].  Osamu Tezuka, known in Japan as Manga no Kamisama (God of Manga), drew over 150,000 pages in 40 years (Schodt, 1983, 139).  Tezuka was so popular that when he died in 1989, “he was mourned like a fallen monarch” (Schodt, 1996, 233).  When the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum opened in Takarazuka in 1994, over 400,000 people passed through its doors in the first eight months (Schodt, 1996, 244).

The variety of content produced in manga and anime is vast.  While Shukan Shonen Jump [Weekly Boy’s Jump], the most popular magazine in Japan, is a manga compilation targeted to early teenage boys, manga magazines are produced for nearly every gender and age demographic.  Similarly, the target audience for anime television shows varies with the time slot.  Children’s shows are on weekend mornings, broader-appealing shows reach prime-time, and more adult-oriented fare is found during the late night hours (Levi, 12).

While the Japanese government frowned on manga and anime for years, it has recently began to accept it as a reality of not only Japanese popular culture, but of Japanese culture in general.   In 1995, Kiichi Miyazawa began serializing a column of his opinions, not in a newspaper or newsmagazine, but in Biggu Komikku Supirittsu [Big Comic Spirits], a popular manga magazine read by 1.4 million young salarymen and potential voters each week (Schodt, 1996, 19).

As manga and anime make their way into the mainstream of North America, it is important to take a close look at them.  This paper will attempt to examine anime and manga topic-by-topic.  Their shared history will be discussed from its earliest roots in woodblock prints.   Sections on the workings of the industries, as well as the techniques and symbols used in manga and anime will also be included.   Themes regarding gender and sexuality and war and nuclear holocaust within the media will be reviewed.  Additionally, sections on both Tezuka and Miyazaki, as well as specific analyses of various anime titles will be included.

II.   Early History

If one were to research the long tradition of a visual and drawn means of storytelling in Japanese society, it would come as no surprise that manga and anime are such common modes of expression and communication in modern Japan.  The kanji characters borrowed from China, for instance, originally were drawn to closely resemble the things or ideas they were supposed to represent (Schodt, 1983, 25).

The earliest known caricature drawings of Japanese origin date back to the sixth and seventh centuries and were found in Buddhist monasteries.  The country’s first undisputed masterpiece of cartooning was created by a Buddhist bishop, Sojo Toba, in the early 12^th century.  His work, Chojugiga [“The Animal Scrolls”], incorporated humor into the Chinese art form of the narrative picture scroll.  Chojugiga featured anthropomorphized animals in antics mocking the Buddhist clergy.  Other picture scrolls, often drawn by clergy, depicted humorously such things as “phallic contests” and farting competitions that would, many years later, be featured on television variety and game shows and in risqué manga (Schodt, 1983, 28-30).

The humorous scrolls of Buddhist and Zen monks gave way to mass-produced woodblock prints in the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries.  The woodblock prints provided cheap entertainment for common people.  The most popular prints, ukiyo-e, depicted illustrations of “the floating world,” areas of entertainment and leisure for the lower classes of Japanese society.  Iwasa Matabei, founder of the ukiyo-e school, believed in a great mission of producing prints about the common people and for the common people (Leibowitz, 13).  The latter days of ukiyo-e popularity featured two well-known artists, Hokusai Katsushika and Hiroshige Utagawa, who enjoyed a status similar to that of popular manga artists today.  The end of the Edo Period and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, however, saw the end of ukiyo-e, since many things popular during the Edo era were wiped out by the Meiji regime (Fujikake, 57-60). 

During the same time period that ukiyo-e were at the height of their popularity, narrative picture books such as the toba-e and kibyoshi appeared.  The kibyoshi, in fact, were much like today’s manga.  They were serialized, combined words and pictures to tell stories, and contained strong narrative plot lines (Schodt, 1983, 37).  During the 19^th century, with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s American fleet, Japanese artists began incorporating Western styles into their work.  Soon, spot cartoons were appearing in Japanese newspapers and magazines (39-42). 

Later, in the 1920s, many Japanese artists who traveled to the United States marveled at the “Sunday funnies” fad sweeping that country (Schodt, 1983, 43).  Translated American comics soon appeared in Japanese newspapers, followed quickly by native Japanese ones.  Shigeo Miyao was one of the first artists to use the word manga (literally, “funny pictures”) close to its current sense.  In 1922, he began serializing Manga Taro [Comics Taro] in a daily newspaper.  It was later compiled into book form (49-51). 

Japanese children’s magazines such as Shonen Club [Boys’ Club], Shojo Club [Girls’ Club], and Yonen Club [Youths’ Club], containing a heavy dose of serialized comics, saw publication in the 1920’s.  The magazines were published by Kodansha, modern Japan’s largest publishing and manga-publishing company, and served as precursors to today’s manga magazines (Schodt, 1983, 51).

The rise of Japanese imperialism during the World War II era saw a stall in the growth of manga.   Since paper was in short supply due to the war effort, upstart manga magazines closed their doors.  Comics were used as propoganda, however, selling the war to Japanese citizens and proclaiming Japanese supremacy to Allied soldiers (Schodt, 1983, 54-60).  During the immediate years after the war, many unemployed manga artists found work as kami-shibai narrators.  A kami-shibai narrator performs in a park or other public place, pulling sequential manga-style drawings in and out of a frame and providing narration and sound effects to the story.  Such a practice could be seen as a crude form of anime (Schilling, 85).

After the war, manga magazines slowly began popping up once again.  In 1947, Osamu Tezuka had his first manga hit in Shin Takarajima [New Treasure Island].  Shin Takarajima was as popular for its artistic innovation as it was for its storyline.  In it, Tezuka used movie-style close-ups and varied the size and shape of the manga frame to better dramatize his characters’ movements and mental states.  Such practices are now common techniques in manga (Schilling, 265).

Tezuka’s new style fascinated manga readers and the public in general.  Many of those who purchased Tezuka’s work felt they were no longer reading manga, they were viewing it (Schilling, 265).  It would logically follow of course, that Tezuka would be the first manga artist to make the jump out of the printed page and into the television set.

III.   Manga to Anime

The first Japanese talking animation was the 1932 film Chikara to Onna no Yononaka [The World of Power and of Women], directed by Kenzo Masaoka.  Still, early Japanese animation remained relegated to the occasional theatrical release and paled in comparison to Disney works of the time.  In 1962, however, Osamu Tezuka took manga, and Japanese animation, to television (Baricordi, etc., 12).

Tezuka’s popular manga strip and character of the same name, Tetsuwan Atom [Might Atom; Astro Boy], had enjoyed enormous success for 11 years before Tezuka took his franchise to TV.  When it aired for the first time, it became the first of many Japanese animated television series to come.   It also became the first successful cross-over of manga to anime (Schodt, 1996, 245). 

Unlike American heroes, who usually fought for justice, Tetsuwan Atom fought for peace, the ultimate goal in defeated postwar Japan.  He did not have simple superpowers, he was a humanistic robot that operated on pseudo-scientific principles.  Tezuka wrote that he had created Tetsuwan Atom as “a nearly perfect robot who strove to become more human and emotive and to serve as an interface between the two very different cultures of man and machine” (Schodt, 1996, 245).  Such features made Tetsuwan Atom both fantastic and accessible to young Japanese viewers.   He also became the grandfather of the now-standard manga theme of the interplay of man and machine.

Three years later, Tezuka led anime to the next step in television – color.  Tezuka’s Jungle Taitei [Kimba:  The White Lion] was published first as a manga story in 1951, but hit television in 1965, three years after the debut of Tetsuwan Atom (Baricordi, etc., 19).  Both of Tezuka’s groundbreaking television series were translated and edited for American television in the 1960s and enjoyed moderate success in that country.  Animators worldwide became familiar with Tezuka’s work, planting the seeds of a controversy that erupted three decades later.  In August 1994, 200 people involved in the anime industry wrote a letter to Disney demanding acknowledgement that the hit movie The Lion King was partially based on Tezuka’s Jungle Taitei.  Disney refused their demands (Levi, 6-7).

While the anime industry was beginning to take shape, the modern landscape of the manga industry was also starting to come together.  Shukan Shonen Jump, today’s king of manga magazines, hit newsstands and stores for the first time in 1968.

IV.   Recent History

In 1988, something remarkable happened in the world of manga.  The New Year’s special edition of Shukan Shonen Jump was purchased by 70% of all boys between the ages of 10-15 in Japan (Kumagai, 74). What had happened during the magazine’s first 20 years of existence to build the manga industry into such a gigantic phenomenon?  Let us take a look at the last three decades of manga and anime history. 

Jump was not the most popular boys’ manga magazine when it debuted.  In fact, it faced a challenge in trying to compete with well-established magazines such as Shonen Sunday [Boys’ Sunday] and Shonen Magazine [Boys’ Magazine].  Because Jump, at first, could not attract well-known manga artists to grace its pages, it turned instead to an aggressive strategy of building its content based on feedback surveys given to readers.  The magazine’s publishers also decided to include a wide variety on genres, ranging from school love comedies to science fiction thrillers (Schodt, 1996, 89-90). 

Fourteen years before Jump first went on sale, one of the oldest and most well-known manga magazines for young girls was born.  Nakayoshi, first published in 1954, saw its popularity rise tremendously during the 1970’s on the strength of two hit stories (Schodt, 1996, 92-93).  Ribon no Kishi [Princess Knight], by Osamu Tezuka, told the tale of a medieval princess who dressed up as and pretended to be a prince, because her father had wanted a boy.  Candy Candy, by Yumiko Iigarashi, was about the life and romance of a young American girl in the Midwest (Schilling, 273).

The manga industry continued to grow through the 1980s and 1990s.  Manga magazines with all sorts of target audiences and themes began to spring up.   Big Comic runs a series of publications, targeting salarymen, beginning with 20-25 year olds and ending up with men in their forties  (Schodt, 1996, 96-99).  Adult women were not exempt from the burgeoning manga explosion.  In the 1980s, manga magazines targeted at young adult women first appeared, and, in 1993, Yan Mama Comic [“Young Mother” Comic] debuted.  Yan Mama Comic is specifically targeted to “young mothers with attitude” (127-128).

Themed manga magazines appeared as well.  A few combat-themed comics appeared, a fad of manga magazines featuring only stories centering around games of mah-jong peaked in the 1980s, and a magazine dedicated to stories of pachinko playing was introduced.  As manga became more commercial, manga magazines featuring edgier and alternative comics made their mark.  

A large part of the growth of manga was due to the increasingly common extended marketing technique of turning a popular manga into anime.  In addition, the anime industry began turning out original hits, some of which, oddly enough, were then turned into manga. 

In 1971, Lupin Sensei [Lupin III] jumped out of the pages of manga and onto the small screen.   The title character, who would later appear in films as well, was the forerunner of a common character in anime and manga today.   Lupin was an anti-hero – a burglar, a lady’s man, and a liar, but a likable genius nonetheless (Baricordi, etc., 42-43).  

Three years later, Reiji Matsumoto’s Uchu Senkan Yamato [Space Battleship Yamato] made its debut on television.  Yamato, which would span several television series and spawn several movies, benefited to the previous film experience of Matsumoto, who united precision and design with a screenplay rich in drama, pathos, and poetry (Baricordi, etc., 59). 

As the sheer number of anime titles increased, the hits still kept coming.  Versailles no Bara [The Rose of Versailles], one of the most popular girls’ comics of all time, leaped from manga to anime in 1979 and was an instant success.  In 1981 one of anime’s longest-running hits, Urusei Yatsura [Those Obnoxious Aliens] made its debut on television.  Rumiko Takahashi’s manga-adapted series featured a bounty of oddball and extraterrestrial characters and tackled subjects both religious and profane with absolute irreverence (Baricordi, etc., 119). 

In 1983, anime broke new ground when Keiji Nakazawa’s manga Hadashi no Gen [Barefoot Gen] was adapted for cinema.  The film was a semi-autobiographical tale of a young boy’s struggles during and after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States in 1945.  Gen was one of the first moderately-successful commercial anime films to deal with a subject so harrowing and realistic (Baricordi, etc., 151). 

With so much anime popping up, it is impressive just how much the late 1980’s and 1990’s in anime belonged to Hayao Miyazaki.  Miyazaki and his production studio churned out one critically-acclaimed box office success after another (McCarthy 28).  Still, other anime titles made splashes during that time period. 

In the late 1990’s, anime began seeking new directions.  Anime such as the movie Kokaku Kidotai [Ghost in the Shell] began incorporating computer graphics into traditionally-produced animation.   Perfect Blue, a psychological thriller, was a hit at the box office and showed just how much anime had grown up.  At the same time, hit children’s shows such as Pokemon and Bishoujo Sensi Sailormoon [Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon] enjoyed widespread commercial success on a global scale, including in the United States. 

V.  The Industries

So, after a 50-year explosion in popularity, manga and anime have evolved into multi-million dollar cousin industries.  What, exactly, is it, however, that people are buying when they’re buying manga or anime?  How do the industries work? 

A typical manga magazine contains roughly 350 pages (some contain fewer, some many more – as many as 600 or more), with typically just 15 to 20 pages of ads.  Each magazine contains about 15 serialized and concluding stories (Schodt, 1983, 13).  Despite their size, even the largest manga magazines will rarely be priced above three or four dollars.  Keeping prices low is the cheap recycled paper that manga magazines are typically printed on – outside of the cover and a few inside pages, the magazines are black and white.

The magazines are not meant to be kept.  In fact, most of them are tossed into the trash after a quick read.  Instead of magazines being horded, popular stories are compiled into paperback and hardback book editions.  Fans of these stories will purchase these books for safe-keeping.  For long-running stories, it is not unusual for such a compilation to consist of over 20 volumes of 1,000 pages each (Schodt, 1996, 23). 

While popular manga artists enjoy celebrity status equal to that of pop music stars in Japan, their lives are unenviable.  It is not uncommon for artists to sleep no more than four or five hours per night or work on five to six stories for different magazines at the same time.  Popular artist Hiroshi Fujimoto once described the how “the longest I ever continuously worked was around seventy-two hours straight.”  Fujimoto kept quick snacks that could be eaten with one hand within reach.  “For two days and three nights I worked straight, not resting a minute except to go to the bathroom” (Schodt, 1983, 138-139).

Unlike American comic book artists who work as part of a team, manga artists are personally responsible for nearly all of what goes into a story.  Some manga artists may employ an assistant or two to draw backgrounds and a few hire people to help write out the dialogue, but, for the most part, the name that appears on a manga story is the name truly responsible for its creation (Schodt, 1983, 140-141).

An interesting subsection of the manga industry is the world of dojinshi.  Dojinshi, amateur comics produced outside of the mainstream media, have a following in Japan bigger than that of so-called “indie” music in the United States.  The grandest of all dojinshi conventions, Super Comic City comes, every spring, to Tokyo.  The 1994 convention was held inside the huge Harumi Trade Center and featured nearly 18,000 different booths.  Interestingly, the dojinshi market is extremely popular among females; it was estimated that nearly 90 percent of the attendees at Super Comic City in 1994 were teenage and twenty-something females (Schodt, 1996, 36-37).

While dojinshi thrives, manga is still a commercial commodity.  All of the major publishing companies in Japan have a role in the production of at least some manga magazines or books.  Similarly, anime is a big business for most of Japan’s biggest production companies.  Toho Company, which was responsible for Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Seven Samurai and many of the Godzilla films, produced some of the movie editions of the hit manga and animated television show Urusei Yatsura.

Anime comes in three different forms:  television shows, original-animation-to-video, and full-length cinematic features.  Japanese television shows generally have planned beginnings and endings and run for a set amount of episodes over one season.  If a show is extremely popular, subsequent sequel series with many of the same characters may air.  The manga-adapted anime show Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, was technically five separate shows, each with a beginning and an ending:  Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon R, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon S, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon SuperS, and Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon Sailorstars. Thus, anime television shows sometimes view more like long mini-series to Americans than they do television shows (McCarthy 11).

Original-animation-to-video, OAVs, come in several forms.  Some OAVs will seem like no more than a couple non-sequential episodes of a television show.  These are usually adapted from a moderately popular manga and are seen as a special treat to fans of that title.  Other OAVs are original titles and span anywhere from four hours to ten hours or more.  In addition, there are OAV specials of popular anime television series (Levi, 16).

Hit anime television shows often will have movie spin-offs as well.  Other anime movies are written straight out of the pages of a popular manga story, though sometimes retold and often abridged (after all, many manga series are extremely long).  Of course, there are also anime films that are completely original stories.  These are often some of the most accessible and successful films, since television-based and manga-based anime films are often intended for viewers who are already familiar with the characters in them.  

VI.   Techniques and Conventions

One of the most often asked questions by non-Japanese about manga and anime is, “Why are the characters’ eyes so big?”  While many manga and anime artists no do not draw big-eyed characters, a substantial portion of them draw at least some of these characters in this manner.  Like many of the conventions of manga and anime, there is a story behind this. 

Osamu Tezuka was one of the first manga artists to draw characters with huge, rounded eyes.  His style was similar to that of Disney cartoons of the time and characters such as Betty Boop (Junko 3).  It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that the style of large eyes seen in today’s manga and anime truly began to take shape.

During that time period, characters in shonen, or boys’, manga had “thick, arched Kabuki-style eyebrows and glaring eyes.”  In shojo, or girls’, manga, however, artists began drawing characters with saucer-like eyes, in part to establish shojo manga as separate from shonen manga.  More importantly, though, the large eyes were meant to be expressive and show emotion.  Main characters’ eyes were sometimes even drawn with stars next to the pupil.  The eyes became such a shojo obsession that there was even a girls’ monthly manga magazine entitled Hitomi [Pupils] (Schodt, 1983, 91).

During the late 1980’s, when more the line between boys’ and girls’ manga began to blur, smaller-eyed characters began showing up in shonen manga and larger-eyed characters began showing up in shojo manga.  Anime followed suit, as well.  While some artists continued to draw characters exclusively with small eyes or large eyes, many began to use the large eyes as a symbols for innocence or goodness.  In the anime Tenchi Muyo [No Need for Tenchi], young Sasami, who is the only character in the series who cares about everyone else with no strings attached, has enormous, shining eyes.  Meanwhile, Yosho, who has lived hundreds of years and has endured and seen many hardships has realistically drawn eyes (Levi 119). 

As was mentioned previously, a typical weekly or monthly manga magazine is about 350 pages long, but quickly gets tossed in the trash.  In fact, the average manga fan can flip through an entire 320-page magazine in about 20 minutes, spending 3.75 seconds on each page.  At that rate, it seems that no one could actually be reading anything.  That’s partially true.  The process of taking in a manga is more similar to scanning or viewing than it is to reading (Schodt, 1996, 26). 

The extensive use of pictures and symbols, rather than lengthy dialogue or narration, to tell the story in a manga helps make this possible.  Artists will often use several pages to portray one dramatic moment or several panels to show the same expressive face by using different “camera angles” or perspectives.   On the other hand, manga artists may incorporate several pieces of simplistic action into one page-sized panel to show a jump ahead in time or minor details (Schodt, 1996, 28).  Because manga are so quickly scanned and tossed, backgrounds may be roughly drawn or absent all together in panels where they are not important. 

To help manga fans keep pace, an artist will also employ stylized conventions and symbols that are either universally recognizable throughout manga or throughout the work of that particular artist.  Doing so enables the manga fans to quickly recognize happiness, sadness, surprise, and other things that would normally take more work on the part of the artist to portray and the observer to recognize.  Unfortunately, such conventions, which are also used in anime, help make some manga and anime less accessible to non-Japanese people unfamiliar with what they mean (Schodt, 1996, 52). 

One of the more common conventions employed in manga and anime is the appearance of a single teardrop near the top of a character’s head.  After seeing this symbol appear enough times, one realizes that it represents a combination of exasperation and frustration.  It often appears over a more serious character’s head, when a whimsical character is being silly. 

Another such convention is the sudden nosebleeds that male characters, usually teenage or college-aged, get in some manga and anime.  The nosebleeds are meant to signify inappropriate sexual stimulation and, unlike the teardrop, are often acknowledged within the plot and lead to embarrassment.  In the anime OAV Koko wa Greenwood [Here is Greenwood], Hasukawa Kazuya is visited at college by his brother’s wife, who he is secretly in love with.  When she greets him with a hug, his nose begins to bleed and he tears out of the room.

In a similar fashion to their confusion over large-eyed characters, those unfamiliar with manga and anime are often struck by the unusual hair colors of anime characters.  While some of these hair colors really are supposed to be unusual, usually in human-like alien characters, most of the time the differences in hair color are stylistic only.  The black-and-white nature of manga sometimes would make it difficult to tell all characters apart if they all had dark hair.  Because of this, some characters are given light hair for this purpose only.  In the “reality” of the story, most, if not all, the characters would have brown hair.  When the characters are translated into color for manga covers or anime, they are sometimes given unusual hair colors like blue or green, in addition to all the “normal” colors of hair found on people (Poitras 64).

These kinds of conventions abound in anime and manga.  In this context, manga, and to some extent anime, are simply another kind of language in and of themselves with the panels or cells adhering to a unique grammar.  This should not be too surprising, since the ideogram-style Japanese alphabets, especially the Chinese-borrowed kanji system, are, in their own way, a type of cartooning   (Schodt, 1996, 26).   

VII.   Gender and Sexuality

As previously mentioned in the discussion of dojinshi, girls and women are active fans of manga and anime.  They are also active participants in it.  Women have been writing the large majority of girls’ manga stories for more than three decades, dominate the pages of young women’s manga, and are now even producing manga and anime that appeal to boys and men as well.  As more office ladies or OLs, the term used to describe young women working in businesses, enter the workplace in Japan the presence of women in the manga and anime industries will continue to grow.  One manga artist, Risu Akizuki, muses, “I wonder how far OLs are going to evolve eventually” (Akizuki 9). 

Still, the treatment of women as subjects in manga and anime, by both male and female artists, has been brought into question.  While mainstream manga and anime contain both female stereotypes and messages of female empowerment, erotic manga and anime titles for both men and women have a poor track record for gender treatment.  The poses of women in erotic manga and anime often closely resemble the “male gaze” poses in American pornography.  Women either “pose directly for the camera or act is if the camera is unaware.”  Both positions are ones where the observer is in the position of power (Allison 61).  Since the national ban against the depiction of genitalia was dropped by the Japanese government in the early 1990’s, the prevalence of adult titles containing graphic portrayals of sex has grown in manga and anime.  (Of course, they were not uncommon before. Artists simply used creative substitution – drawing an exploding rocket where an erect penis should be and so forth.)

Sadly, the treatment of women in erotic manga and anime may come as no surprise to most Americans, who are used to a culture of pornographic degradation of women.  What may be surprising however is that there are hundreds of manga and anime stories depicting homosexual male relationships in a positive light and that these stories are mostly written by and written for heterosexual women.  In fact, the bimonthly manga magazine June is entirely devoted to these stories. 

Toshihiko Sagawa, one of the editors at June’s publishing company, explains why such stories are popular with girls and women.  He asserts that the main characters are male, but they also have some feminine traits, specifically their gentility and beauty.  Thus, women can relate to the characters while keeping them at a distance.  Girls and young women in Japan still have constraints on them socially.   Homosexual love, with all its taboos, appears to them to be a more “real” type of love, existing outside the constraints of society (Schodt, 1996, 122-123).  It is also interesting to note that homosexual relationships of either gender and gender-bending are common throughout all manga and anime.  While there are taboos against such things in Japan, they are not wrapped-up in the religious overtones that they are in the United States. 

VIII.   War and Nuclear Holocaust

There are few more difficult topics for most Japanese people, especially those alive before 1950, to address than war.  After being sold on nationalistic and militaristic rhetoric in the 1930s, Japan became the recipient of the only two atomic bomb attacks in history.  Because of this, modern-day realistic war stories of victory and glorification are very much absent from Japanese popular culture.  In their place are samurai stories and science-fiction showdowns. 

While there are a couple of manga magazines that specialize in war comics, it is definitely no more than a niche market (Schodt, 1996, 117).  Instead, there have been some popular anime and manga titles such as Hotaru no Haka and Hadashi no Gen that deal instead with the personal horrors of World War II.  Science-fiction and fantasy manga deal with the threat of nuclear holocaust and the end of civilization in a cathartic manner, placing very real possibilities in an unreal time or place.  From Uchu Senkan Yamato to Akira, manga and anime creators have a three-decades old tradition of presenting science-fiction stories that show the problems and consequences of employing an ultimate weapon.                 

IX.   Sex, Violence, and Cathartic Possibilities

It is important to remember that manga and anime cover many genres, but it is true that there are numerous titles that feature graphic sex and violence, though with no less complex of story lines than the ones that do not. These manga and anime join an abundance of violent and erotic books and films, which permits many Japanese to vicariously live contrary to the culture’s dominant values (Hendry, 178). Such a dichotomy between the popularity of such media and traditional Japanese values is, by Japanese standards, no hypocrisy. Remembering that the Japanese culture is particularistic in its values and judgments rather than universal, it is easy to see how the dichotomy works. In order for everyday society to function harmoniously without the violence and eroticism evident in certain media, people must live out their desires for these things through films, books, manga, etc.

Thus, by Japanese cultural standards, violent crime and sexual deviance disruptive to the flow of society is completely unacceptable in everyday life, but enjoying manga, anime, or other media that portray such violence or deviance is very much tolerated and in some ways expected. In the words of one scholar, "…the sometimes excessive violence of films, comics and television programs makes it possible for (Japanese) people to live in quiet and apparently uneventful harmony in the real world" (Hendry, 178).

It is important to remember that this dynamic is a fragile one that relies on the assumption that the cultural values are antithetical to the ones presented in such media, rather than extreme perversions of them, which is often the case in U.S. media. It should come as no surprise that a culture that values aggressiveness and individualism such as the United States have much greater problems with societal behavior being influenced by violent media than Japanese culture does. While the relationship between media and society is far from this simple, such differences provide a clue to understanding the link between society, popular culture, and media in Japan.

X.  Tezuka and Miyazaki:  Giants in their Fields

Throughout the history of the manga and anime industries, no two people have done more to advance their respective arts than Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki.  Tezuka was a manga pioneer who helped bridge the gap between that medium and anime.  Miyazaki and his production company, Studio Ghibli, turned Japanese animated feature films into true works of art that rival the visual mastery of Disney and surpass that company’s efforts in plot and character development. 

Osamu Tezuka

Osamu Tezuka was born in Toyonaka City, a part of Osaka, on November 3, 1928, but grew up in nearby Takarazuka, famous for its hot springs, theater, and natural beauty.  Until World War II, he enjoyed a comfortable existence, with upper middle class progressive parents who were interested in the arts.  Tezuka began drawing at a young age and received support from his parents (Schodt, 1996, 234). 

Tezuka began drawing his first published comic strip in 1946, while stil an 18-year old medical student, and had his first hit only one year later.  While most remembered outside of Japan for bringing Tetsuwan Atom to televisions across the world, Tezuka’s hit manga titles ran the gamut of genres.  In his fourty-four-year career, he tackled everything from Hi no Tori [The Phoenix], a twelve-volume saga of karma and reincarnation, to Adolf ni Tsugu [The Story of Three Adolfs], an examination of the Nazi era through the eyes of a German diplomat and a German Jew living in Japan (Schilling, 263-264).

The challenging themes of much of Tezuka’s work helped bring manga into the realm of serious arts.   His characters were fallible and wrestled with issues of guilt and responsibility, doubt and faith, death and rebirth.  In the process, he proved that he could handle weighty themes and create complex characters through manga as well as any novelist could through words (Schilling 263).

While often compared to Walt Disney for his scope and influence, Tezuka struggled as a businessman.   When he entered animation, he had difficulty keeping production companies afloat.  His first company, Mushi Productions, went broke in 11 years, despite churning out a few commercial successes.  Still, that company, which dared to take risks in animation that major studios at the time would not, helped bring anime into its own as a theatrical form (Levi 20). 

Since his death in 1989, Tezuka’s legend has continued to grow.  Museums have shown his work, and one exclusively featuring his work opened in 1994.  The letter written by anime professionals to Disney that same year demanding acknowledgement of the influence of Tezuka’s Jungle Taitei in the production of The Lion King was another tribute to his prominence.  Also in 1994, the Takarazuka Theatre, a famous all-female theatre group, chose two of Tezuka’s works as their first manga-inspired shows.  The respect and love of Tezuka in Japan is equal to that of the country’s greatest emperors (Schodt, 1996, 255-256). 

Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941.  His father was the director of an aircraft parts company, while his mother spent much of Miyazaki’s youth bedridden with spinal tuberculosis.  An intelligent woman, she expressed disdain of Japanese intellectuals who had rapidly changed from rabid nationalists to devoted democrats after World War II.   Miyazaki later said that he inherited his questioning and skeptical manner of thinking from her (Schilling, 139).

After graduating from the esteemed Gakushuin University, Miyazaki went to work for Toei Animation, the largest animation studio in Japan.  Although he began at the bottom of the company, his talents were soon recognized by his superiors.   His first hit which remains well-known today was the Lupin III film Cagliostro no Shiro [The Castle of Cagliostro] which he did for A-Pro, an animation company he helped found (Schilling, 140-141).

Miyazaki’s breakthrough hit was, however, the 1984 film Kaze no Tani Nausicaa.  Three years earlier, the animation-review magazine Animage approached Miyazaki and asked him to draw a manga series for publication in that magazine.  Miyazaki began drawing Nausicaa at the magazine’s request and it was later adapted for the big screen.  Nausicaa related the story of a post-nuclear apocalyptic world and incorporated one of Miyazaki’s favorite themes – the relationship between humankind and nature.   On the heels of the film’s commercial and critical success, Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli, his current production studio (Schodt, 1996, 276-277).

Unlike Tezuka, Miyazaki cared little for Disney films.  He found them too simple and superficial.  While he appreciated the realistic movement in Disney works, he felt they lacked realistic human emotion.  Interestingly, it was Miyazaki who finally beat Disney at the Japanese box office.  Mononoke Hime surpassed all Disney films in Japan and did so with a complex plotline, no truly good or truly bad characters, challenging themes, and stunningly beautiful animation (Levi, 37).

XI.   Examining Specific Anime Works

While manga surpasses anime in Japan in scope, popularity and saturation, anime has been more successful abroad.  This is due, primarily because of the relative difficulties in translation.  Manga magazines, like all Japanese printed matter, are read back to front and right to left.  Thus, producing English-language manga requires much more work than the subtitling or dubbing of anime.   It is for this reason that the review of works below has been limited to anime. 

Uchu Senkan Yamato [Space Battleship Yamato]

(Film, 1977)

As the first feature film edition of the television series of the same name, Uchu Senkan Yamato brought the combination of science-fiction and nationalistic catharsis to the big screen.  The word “Yamato” was, at one time, the Japanese people’s own name for their country.  The Yamato battleship in the film’s title is a real Japanese battleship sunk during World War II. 

The film is set hundreds of years in the future, when the people of Earth have been driven underground to survive the irradiated atmosphere of the planet.  The atmosphere had been polluted by a surprise attack by the planet Gamilus.   As the radiation continues to permeate the planet, Earth receives a message from the planet Iscandar.  The message promises Earth a way to save itself if a crew of Earthlings come to Iscandar to receive it.  Thus, the battleship Yamato is resurrected and remodeled into a spaceship, which has 365 days to make a 296,000 light year round-trip to Iscandar before the radiation levels on Earth become intolerable.  The film, produced at a time when many adult Japanese were still trying to make sense of World War II, provides the opportunity for an ill-fated battleship to rise again and save the world.  

Urusei Yatsura 2:  Byutifuru Dorima [Beautiful Dreamer]

(Film, 1984)

Regarded by many as the finest film spin-off of Rumiko Takahashi’s manga and anime television series Urusei Yatsura, Byutifuru Dorima centers around the playful antics of the series’ main characters, the feisty alien princess Lum and her school-boy fiancé Ataru.   The magic of the film, and of Urusei Yatsura in general, however, is the way in which it incorporates many elements of Japanese culture and legend in a modernized way. 

Byutifuru Dorima plays with the notion of the uncertainty of whether or not life is reality or merely a dream.  It draws of the Japanese legends and mythical beings, including a demon of nightmares that appears in the filem as a plump gray-haired man with a wide grin and the monster that eats dreams, which appears as a pig.  Byutifuru Dorima and all of Urusei Yatsura is enormously popular in Japan for its frequent unusual incorporations of such cultural elements.  The fact that Urusei Yatsura has done well abroad in spite of these cultural references is a tribute to the overall comedic value of Takahashi’s creation. 

Baburugamu Kuraishisu [Bubblegum Crisis]

(OAV, 1985)

Referred to in advertisements in the U.S. as “the Japanese Animated Cyber-Punk Classic,” Baburugamu Kuraishisu was one of several anime titles to debut in the mid-1980s to feature an all-female band of gun-toting crime fighters.  Set in a near future dominated by large corporations and cyborgs, Baburugamu portrays a Tokyo filled with lawlessness, that, in several ways, could be confused with New York City. 

While the main female characters in the OAV lack the true well roundedness featured in one of its contemporaries, Dirty Pair, Baburugamu still portrayed women in a strong and independent light.  Another interesting aspect of the OAV is that its Tokyo is much more ethnically diverse than the current Tokyo, portraying several different races and ethnicities.  The police chief, in fact, has a Japanese name but is of African descent.   Is Baburugamu a hope for a more heterogeneous and egalitarian Japan or does the lawlessness of its future provide a warning against such changes?

Hotaru no Haka [Grave of the Fireflies]

(Film, 1988)

One of the first products delivered by Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata’s Hotaru no Haka is a clean break from the fantastic or comedic stories found in many anime.  Hotaru no Haka is historical, yet personal, harrowing realism.   The film centers around two characters:   a teenage boy, Seita, and his toddler sister, Setsuko.  In an odd twist, the film opens by revealing that both main characters will die.  Much of the film is then a flashback, beginning in Kobe during World War II. 

Seita and Setsuko lose their mother in a fire-bombing of Kobe, move in with a hard-nosed aunt, and eventually try to survive on their own during the war by living in a mine shaft.  After returning from one of his raids for food, Seita finds Setsuko dead of malnutrition.  He later dies in a train station of similar ailments, just as news of the Japanese surrender is being announced.  Since both characters die, many American viewers find the film powerful, but depressing to an unsettling degree.  There is, however, some catharsis provided, a kind that is more likely appreciated by Japanese viewers.   At the end of the film, the ghostly images of Seita and Setsuko are reunited forever. 

Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon [Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon]

(Five television series, 1992-1996)

One of the biggest recent commercial anime successes in Japan and overseas, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon is a marketing gold mine.  A successful manga became 200 television episodes over five seasons, live-action musical specials were filmed, dozens of CDs were released, toys saturated the market, and everything from Sailormoon clocks to silverware sets were issued.  One scholar notes that “both the volume and variety of Sailormoon products advertised … on the show are mind-boggling” (Napier, 104).  

What is so attractive about Sailormoon?  The show, which is primarily aimed at young girls in Japan, but attracts a wider audience, features are key ingredient for modern girls’ anime success, magical girls.  The show’s main characters are normal teenage girls, with distinctly different personalities who transform into superheroes.  The show’s central character, who becomes Sailormoon, is Usagi Tsukino.  Usagi is clumsy and does poorly in school, but is redeemed by her loyalty to her friends and her altruism.   It is these two qualities that make Sailormoon the most effective Sailor Senshi; on pure power alone she is not the strongest.

Interestingly, the show features several elements that would never make it past the cutting room floor for commercial North American television.  In fact, such things as a strong lesbian couple central to the third and fifth seasons have been edited for North American television.  The fifth season, which features male pop singers who transform into female superheroes, has yet to be touched by a North American company for television release.

Taiho Shichauzo [You’re Under Arrest]

(OAV, 1994)

The original Taiho Schichauzo OAV has now spawned a film and television series.  It is the most famous and successful example of the sub-genre of police situation comedy.  Its main characters, female officers Miyuki and Natsumi begin as mismatched partners and develop into best friends.  Along the way, they catch criminals, develop romances, and help a cat through pregnancy. 

Taiho Schichauzo isn’t feminist.  The chief of the pair’s precinct is male, and a male friend often bails Miyuki and Natsumi out of trouble.  Nonetheless, in a country still adapting to new roles for women in the workplace, Taiho Schichauzo provides that small step of working female role models whom most Japanese women can relate to, but who also are clearly not the always submissive women of the past.  

Kokaku Kidotai [Ghost in the Shell]

(Film, 1995) 

Based on a popular futuristic science-fiction manga series, Mamoru Oshii’s Kokaku Kidotai received international acclaim upon its 1995 release for its smooth incorporation of computer graphics into standard animation.  While a few animators had experimented with blending computer graphics into their medium, no work prior to Kokaku Kidotai made the integration as seamlessly or effortlessly as it did. 

True to the old artistic theory that “form is the vehicle for content,” Kokaku Kidotai is set in a near-future similar to that found in William Gibson novels:  humans have artificial biological and technological implants, replacements, and upgrades, the streets are running with criminals and high-powered weapons, and plugging oneself into the Internet or various other networks is done without the batting of an eye. 

Oshii’s use of computer graphics in such a world is a logical choice.  The film’s flowing transitions between CG and standard animation parallel the Kokaku Kidotai blended world of man and computer.  Produced in the mid-1990’s when the Internet was just beginning to grow exponentially around the globe, Kokaku Kidotai intelligently and fuses its plot, form, and historical context. 

Perfect Blue [Perfect Blue]

(Film, 1997) 

Another anime film that made a critical and, to a lesser extent, commercial splash internationally in the 1990’s was Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue.  Kon, a seasoned director of live-action Japanese films, made his animated debut with Perfect Blue.  The result was an exciting psychological thriller that, at many points, viewed as a live-action film. 

The genre of horror films is in no way absent from anime.  However, Perfect Blue is one of few anime works to delve into the realistic non-horror thriller model similar to American live-action films such as The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.  The story relates the psychological delusions and real-life terror experienced by Mima Kirigoe, a fictional pop music star turned actress. 

Besides its psychological genius and solid direction, Perfect Blue also provides a critical and intelligent look inside Japan’s popular music industry, which often cycles through stars faster than the American industry.  One of Mima’s struggles in the film comes when she decides to shed the sexy-but-innocent image of most Japanese female pop stars and take on risqué acting roles.  The double standards and impossible expectations placed on female pop idols in Japan are well portrayed in the film.

Mononoke Hime [Princess Mononoke]

(Film, 1997) 

Japan’s highest-grossing domestic film of all time and its second highest-grossing film overall, Mononoke Hime is Hayao Miyazaki’s most well-known work worldwide.  Though not necessarily his most intelligent film, Mononoke Hime isn’t dumb and it wonderfully combined heavy themes and round characters with enough commercial appeal to be seen by the masses. 

Set in the Japanese feudal era, the film follows the travels of Ashitaka, a young warrior who receives a curse when bitten by an angry boar god.  Ashitaka eventually discovers Lady Eboshi’s iron mines far to the west and learns of the mine town’s feud with giant animal gods over the surrounding lands.  While there, he encounters San, “Princess Mononoke” (literally, “Princess Phantom”), who lives amongst the wolf gods. 

The film centers around the difficulty in balancing the civilization of man with the harmony of nature.  The true genius in the film, besides its beautiful animation, however, may be its characters.  Not one character in the film is close to being perfect and not one is close to being completely evil.  Eboshi, who in some ways is cold and villain-like, is one of Miyazaki’s most compelling characters.  While she wishes to rid herself of the forest gods and is in many ways an unscrupulous capitalist, she is feminist beyond her era and she counts among her employees and favored people lepers and former brothel girls. 

XII.   The Future of Manga and Anime

As manga and anime begin the 21^st century, a large part of the future of the industries may rest in their successes overseas.  During the last fourty years, both manga and anime have enjoyed some success in other parts of Asia, Europe, Australia and North America.  More recently, Latin America and Africa have been introduced to manga and anime as well.

Anime, because it is so much easier for it to be produced in a subtitled or dubbed foreign language edition than for manga to be translated, has led the way in the Europe and North America.  Over the last five years, the number of English-version anime videos available in North America has rapidly grown and roughly a dozen anime series have found regular spots on national cable or broadcast television in the United States.  More U.S. theatrical releases over anime films have popped up in recent years as well.  This trend is likely to continue; Mononoke Hime was the first of nine Studio Ghibli films purchased by Disney in 1999 to be adapted for U.S. theaters (New York Daily News Service). 

While manga and anime have had cult followings in English-speaking countries for some time, only within the last ten years have they been examined as seriously as they are in their home country.   Museums in London, Boston, and San Francisco featured manga and anime exhibits in the early 1990’s.  In 1995, an international conference on anime and manga was held at the University of Sydney and a symposium on manga was hosted at Georgetown University (Schodt, 1996, 337). 

The boon in popularity of anime and manga outside of Japan can easily be attributed to a global industrialized culture, and this is partially true, but sociologist Sharon Kinsella thinks there is more to it than that.  She feels that the two media are on the verge of becoming like the “tea ceremony” to the Japanese government.  Until recently, the government had preferred to stress “safe culture” – refined arts and crafts, Zen, the tea ceremony, etc. – when propagandizing Japanese culture to Western nations.  Now, however, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sends copies of the foreign language manga magazine Mangajin to its embassies and consulates in 180 nations around the world.  In 1996, it also handed out copies of a translates “business manga” anthology to 500 foreign reporters at an international conference (Schodt, 1996, 339-340). 

Of course, communications technology has also helped the spread of manga and anime.  The growth of the breadth and power of the Internet has allowed manga and anime fans worldwide to unite and to swap image files, sound files, and videos.   The transfer of knowledge about manga and anime worldwide has helped lead to a wider variety of foreign language releases of anime and a an effort by a substantial group of publishing companies to publish more and more translated manga despite the difficulty to do so. DVD technology has also allowed for multiple language video releases of anime titles. 

In their home country, manga and anime will most likely continue to thrive.  While manga sales have flattened out in recent years, they remain high.   Anime producers and directors will keep experimenting with new camera shots, plotlines, and themes in the near future and will explore new ways to integrate computer graphics.  The success of Kokaku Kidotai and other anime titles like it revealed a lucrative future in computer-enhanced animation in Japan.   

XIII.   Conclusion

Manga is not simply a small part of the vast popular culture landscape in Japan, it is perhaps its most visible and saturating medium.  Even many anime, thought by many non-Japanese to be as popular or more popular in Japan than manga, are merely commercials for the manga they are based on.  No other country’s comics industry comes close to churning out the incredible publishing numbers that Japan’s does.  A rich history of visual storytelling, some chance historical events, and a booming industrial and popular culture society have all helped produce this phenomenon. 

While very much a younger and less visible sibling of manga in Japan, anime remained a co-focus of this survey because of its global recognition.  Completely opposite of the situation in Japan, potential manga fans in other countries are usually introduced to the medium through anime.  Should manga ever gain a mainstream global audience it will have anime to thank (Schodt, 1996, 339). 

The global influence of manga and anime creators is already being felt.  Western comic publishers have adapted some manga styles and the science-fiction animated film Titan AE, released in the United States last year blended American animation style with the theatrical effects and plotlines of anime.  Disney’s Atlantis, to be released the summer of 2001, will be that studio’s first major animated motion picture release in years to not be a musical and to receive a rating higher than “G.”

Thus, understanding manga and anime may not simply be a task reserved for cult fanatics or curious Asian studies scholars.  The vastness of the industries in Japan, their unique place in that country, and their burgeoning global presence and influence make them a worthwhile academic topic for sociologists, psychologists, historians, communications and media studies scholars, art scholars, and so on.