Split History of Animation to History Of Anime:

Right now the History of Animation seems to just cover just Western Animation with seemingly throw away lines for Anime. While Anime itself has had different eras itself roughly every decade since the 1960s. The Other Wiki on this.

Not an uber expert on the subject but this should be split.

edited 16th Feb '11 5:00:16 PM by Raso

I see no reason not to make a separate article for anime, but I don't know enough to help.

But if Japan is to have its own section, I'd suggest a soft split, give it its own section on the page. But honestly, what the Was happening in the US in the sixties vs what was happening in Russia or Japan call all the described as happening in the sixties in the same article.

Japan doesn't get its own separate book distinct from the rest of world history, its included with everyone else.

If this was world history you would be right. This isn't world history. This is the history of two different mediums that took different evolutionary routes.

Anime developed completely differently from the rest of the world. 60s were Tom And Jerry while Japan was all Super Robot, while everyone was watching Hanna Barbara episodic crap in the 70s Serial shows like Gundam were airing on the other side of the world.

Mid 1990s Neon Genesis Evangelion showed up and completely changed everything.

And right now with Western Animation going Flash Animation, Anime is going the other direction with Puni Plush and actual CG. and now the whole Tokyo Law thing is going to be ushering in a new era of no one is quite sure yet.

And if ya want you can do a History Of Eastern Animation too I dont see a problem with it.

But now that I think about it it would probably be History Of Anime And Manga.

edited 16th Feb '11 5:44:12 PM by Raso

I did a speech presentation on the history of anime in school a couple years ago. It wouldn't be a bad idea to talk about the history of Anime.

The concept of illustrated stories dates back to centuries old pieces of bamboo that had carvings in them. After WW 2, Japan would find the Manga industry (and animation industry by association) would help Japan's economy and society recover from the war. Osamu Tezuka's creations and character designs were inspired by Western Animation from the 1920's and 30's, such as Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop (why do you think anime characters have such large eyes?) Osamu himself is considered to be the "God of Anime", as he was the one who most of the entire industry owes it's inspiration from. Even the Lion King wouldn't exist if not for Kimba The White Lion. Because of him, other inspirational and legendary anime and manga creators.

• Shotaro Ishinomori would help keep Tezuka's original art style alive long after he passed away, though he did adapt a slightly different style.
• Even though he didn't invent the Giant Mecha genre, Yoshiyuki Tomino would go onto make it one of the biggest parts of Japanese culture with the creation of the Gundam series.
• Shirow Masamune played a very large factor in defining the Cyberpunk genre. He didn't just inspire anime, but an entire subgenre of Science Fiction in general. Even now, his own series themselves have inspired scientists to look towards and successfully develop new technologies.

There so many more beyond that. Anime's history and it's influence on Japanese and world culture is large enough to be it's own trope.

But then that would mean renaming the trope to History of Western Animation.

Thats what it is now anyway... the writeups give 1 sentience for anime and thats it.

what shimaspawn said (in his first post here)

The pages as they stand now explicitly say they only cover western animation.

And if ya want you can do a History Of Eastern Animation too I dont see a problem with it.

I don't think that's a great idea since I've a seen databases on Soviet Animation and it spans about 70 years and add to that Chinese Animation which is about as old but it got destroyed during and add to that Czech animation, etc. In short I prefer the histories on animation to based on nationality, it's just less of a mindfuck and more coherent in the long run.

edited 16th Feb '11 10:09:17 PM by SatanicHamster

I think you're confusing genre and art style, with medium. They are still the same mediums.

Perhaps these History Of Animation pages should go in the Useful Notes namespace?

Right now they are indexes for famous works, famous people and common tropes associated with that era. I am pretty sure Comic Book Ages have the same thing.

Yeah The Ages Of Super Hero Comics

edited 16th Feb '11 10:50:43 PM by Raso

These aren't Useful Notes. These are indexes of media by era with an explanation of what that era was like.

edited 16th Feb '11 10:53:06 PM by shimaspawn

There is no reason this shouldn't happen, though no doubt someone with more authority than me will find one.

A project like this would best be planned out in the Special Efforts forums.

Yeah this probably will need to be moved...

VERY Rough outline of what I was thinking of pages for this.

• 1959-1978 the first important animes air Astro Boy being the first good one (the first one is so forgettable that its not funny. It starts with the rise of Super Robot. (Insert standard writeup on how manga was inspired by G Is bringing over american comics.)
• 1979- Early 90s the rise of many Genres such as Magical Girl with Sailor Moon, Real Robot with Gundam, Harem Comedies with Rumiko Takahashi's work and Tenshi.
• Mid-90s the rise of Deconstruction animes and a slight resugance of Super Robot while Harem Comedies where in a big decline. The gritty artstyle becomes big. Also the High Point of Anime.
• 2000s with Love Hina Harem Comedy animes boom till late in the decade where Moe Slice of Life Puni Plush animes such as K On are taking the forefront.

Each page would get indexes for animes and people with pages of that era.

edited 17th Feb '11 8:35:49 AM by Raso

While I hate to mention it, it should be noted that the Moe Moe fad, along with the state of the world's economy over the last few years, has heavily contributed to the decline of anime.

Yeah that should go in the 2000s there has been a decline in anime lately and there are a lot of factors to it not just those. Still K On broke Eva's DVD sales record. (Edit: or was it Haruhi S2)

edited 17th Feb '11 8:34:40 AM by Raso

@DRCEQ: Define "decline".

Have you been noticing that there have been less and less animes being dubbed and distributed here in the states in the last few years? Geneon Entertainment went bankrupt, as did ADV Films. ADV was able to reform into Sentai Filmworks, but now they no longer dub any of their anime releases (Clannad being an exception) because they can't invest the money into dubbing them anymore while hoping that they'll make a profit off DVD and Blu-ray sales. Bandai and Viz have also released less and less series with each year. Other than Death Note, Naruto, Bleach, and Gurren Lagann, there haven't been too many major hit series to profit off of. Funimation Entertainment (God bless their hearts) has since become the largest distributor of anime in the united states, covering roughly 80% of everything that is released here nowadays, mostly because of genius business strategies that allowed them to take advantage of the current trends in viewing anime such as with online streaming. This can be contributed to the fact that not as many people have been buying anime in the states, because over in Japan there haven't been nearly as many good animes in which a company would want to invest their time and money into dubbing and releasing. I'm not going to even go into the whole piracy/streaming online subs debate for this.

The decline of Toonami and other programming blocks that showed anime also helped contribute to this. Anime was getting less and less ratings, and eventually almost stopped being aired on TV altogether. Part of this is because of Executive Meddling on Cartoon Network's part, but now the only places you can go to watch anime is Disney XD to catch Dragon Ball Z Kai, Syfy's Ani-Tuesday for 2 hours of anime, Pokemon and Bakugan on early Saturday mornings on CN, and Adult Swim's Saturday block, but only after 12 AM.

Over in Japan, the quality of anime series has declined and returned less profits, forcing anime studios to make less and less animes with each new season. Whereas you may have seen 20-some new series being released a few years ago which would run 26 episodes long, now you would see that number down between 7-13 that would only run 13 episodes instead. Some anime and manga creators attribute this to the Moe Moe fad, where it became easy to produce anime series featuring super cutesy girls while having to barely put any effort into a storyline or technicalities in the animation process. This lead to less and less well thought out series with intriguing storylines being produced just because fans kept demanding more super cutesy girls. Add on top of that that the economy in the United States and Japan have both been in a slump over the last few years (among other places), the anime industry has actually declined.

I don't think anime will ever die, but I don't know whether it'll ever be back to flourishing like it did between 2002-2007.

edited 17th Feb '11 2:24:49 PM by DRCEQ

Well for over here I would blame the economy, over priced DV Ds, unhappy fans of dubs, bad subs, and Fansubs.

And in Japan there is still the same number of animes per season (this season has 17 new ones I think) just most are not willing to throw a double season (26 eps) on an unproven show so they stick with single seasons and give it a sequel also most comedies can get stale. (Which is what most of them are) Most studios have learned their lesson over Year long failures and in this economy that's a closed studio but I do agree that there is a loss in plot lately from animes just becoming to short and just plain screwing up adaptations from mangas in recent year.

edited 17th Feb '11 4:18:43 PM by Raso

^ By that logic, everyone in America is just part of an Unpleasable Fanbase because they're too stuck up and think that any effort to dub an anime will result in an ear-bleeding abomination, yet are instantly capable of telling that Japanese acting is better just because it's in a language they don't understand. Not being able to understand the language prevents them from being able to tell if the acting is actually good or not. :/

Bingo. That's part of the reason for the Sub Only DVD releases(besides the fact they are cheap to produce.)... which are now seen as a bad thing.

edited 17th Feb '11 4:57:54 PM by Raso