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Anime (アニメ) is Japanese Animation, sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau Japanimation. It is often characterized by stylized colorful images depicting vibrant characters in a variety of different settings and storylines, aimed at a wide range of audiences. Anime is usually influenced by Japanese Comics known as Manga.
The Japanese term for animation is アニメーション (animēshon, pronounced: /ɑnimɛːʃɔn/), written in Katakana. It is a direct transliteration of the English term "animation." The Japanese term is abbreviated as アニメ (anime, pronounced: /ɑnimɛ/ ). Both the original and abbreviated forms are valid and interchangeable in Japanese. The term is a broad one, and does not specify an animation's nation of origin or style.
In turn, the English word anime is a Transliteration of the abbreviated version of this Japanese term, and it is typically pronounced as /ˈćnɪˌmei/. Some non-Japanese speakers theorize the word comes from the French animé ("animated") or "les dessins animés" (animated drawings), though the Japanese themselves deny this theory, and the fact that it is written in Japanese syllables as アニメ (anime) rather than アニメー (animei) further lowers its credibility. As with a few other Japanese words such as Pokémon and Kobo Abé, anime is sometimes spelled as animé in English with an Acute accent over the final e to cue the reader that the letter is pronounced as [e]. For example, "Abe" can be mistaken as a nickname for Abraham, in which the e is silent.
Anime once bore the popular name Japanimation, but this term has fallen into disuse. It saw the most usage during the 1970s and 1980s, which broadly comprise the first and second waves of anime Fandom. The term survived at least into the early 1990s but seemed to fade away shortly before the mid-1990s anime resurgence. In general, the term now only appears in nostalgic contexts. The term Japanimation is much more commonly used in Japan to refer to domestic animation. Since anime or animeshon is used to describe all forms of animation, Japanimation is meant to distinguish Japanese work from that of the rest of the world.
In more recent years, anime has also frequently been referred to as Manga in Europe, a practice that may stem from the Japanese usage. In Japan, manga refers to both animation and comics. Among English speakers, manga usually has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics". An alternate explanation is that it is due to the prominence of Manga Entertainment, a distributor of anime to the US and UK markets. This term is much more common in Europe since Manga Entertainment started out in the UK.
The voice actors for anime usually bear the Japanese equivalent designation, seiyū.
In the 1980s, anime experienced a boom in production. The start of the Gundam franchise and the beginnings of Rumiko Takahashi's career have their roots here. Akira set records in 1988 for the production costs of an anime.
The 1990s and 2000s saw the increased acceptance of anime in overseas markets. Cowboy Bebop was widely popular in Japan and attracted attention in the West. Spirited Away shared the first prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2002, and Innocence: Ghost in the Shell was featured at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
It should be noted that typically the drawing style used in anime is counter productive to the animation process, having far too many details and subsequently making it difficult to keep the number of drawings comparable to other cartoons with design ethics that stress simplicity. This may be due to a philosophy of pouring more effort into a each of a few drawings than less effort into one of many.
Anime is often an explicitly commercial art form; producers and marketers aim for very specific audiences, with focused categories for shōnen (boys) and shōjo (girls) genres, as well as for teenagers and adults.
Osamu Tezuka adapted and simplified many Disney animation precepts to reduce the budget and number of frames, though it should be noted that Disney films are not anime. This was intended to be a temporary measure to allow him to produce one episode every week with inexperienced animation staff. Anime studios have since perfected techniques to draw as little new animation as possible, using scrolling or repeating backgrounds, still shots of characters sliding across the screen, and dialogue which involves only animating the mouths while the rest of the screen remains absolutely still, a technique not wholly unfamiliar to Western animation. The overall effect of these techniques-reduced Frame rate, many still shots, scrolling backgrounds-has led some critics to accuse anime of choppiness or poor quality in general. (See also Limited animation.)
However, there are often scenes where the frame rate of the animation far exceeds the norm of the rest of the work. These are commonly called "money shots" outside Japan, where more effort is put into the animation of one scene to give it emphasis over the rest of the work. Animator Yasuo Otsuka was the pioneer of this technique.
Exceptions to these rules are early classic films, such as those produced by Toei Animation up to the mid 1960s, and recent big budget films, such as those produced by the enormously successful Studio Ghibli. These movies have much higher production values, due to their anticipated success at the box office. Some animators in Japan can overcome production values by utilizing different techniques than Disney or the old Tezuka/Otsuka norms of anime. Directors such as Hiroyuki Imaishi (RE: Cutey Honey, Dead Leaves) simplify backgrounds so that more attention can be paid to character animation. Other animators like Tatsuyuki Tanaka (in Koji Morimoto's Eternal Family in particular) use Squash and stretch, an animation technique not often used by Japanese animators; Tanaka makes other shortcuts to compensate for this. Some higher-budgeted television and OVA (Original Video Animation) series also forego shortcuts found in most other anime.
In short, anime tends to be dominated by a school of animation thought that emphasizes direction over character motion as means to save money. Other schools of thought in animation do exist in Japan but these works are less common.
[image] Anime has been available in the North America and Europe for some time. Anime releases there are usually dubbed into the language of the country in which they are released. Anime series are also sometimes edited by Western distributors to remove what they feel local audiences would consider to be objectionable content. This is especially true with series that are marketed to children, such as the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Japan) produced by Nihon Ad Systems and Pokémon (both dubbed by 4kids). (The western versions of these have, in the opinions of some, been edited to be less worthy of the anime genre designation.) In other cases, editing is done to change content to make it easier for Western viewers to understand. Some anime enthusiasts object to one or both forms of editing. Those viewers often watch anime titles in DVD format, because DVD releases are typically unedited and often include both the dubbed audio and the original Japanese audio with subtitles. Another advantage of DVD releases is that there are no commercials, unlike in Television releases. Although it is a violation of Copyright laws in most countries, some fans also watch fansubs, recordings of anime series that have been subtitled by fans. Watching subtitled Japanese versions is usually seen as the "right" way to watch anime by enthusiasts. The ethical implications of producing, distributing, or watching fansubs is a topic of much controversy (See Fansub for further discussion of those ethical issues).
Mainstream anime is often very stylized. Because of this stylization certain features or concepts have become so common that they have been given names of their own. Often in comedic anime, characters that are shocked or surprised will perform a "face fault", in which they take an extremely exaggerated expression. Angry characters may exhibit a "vein" or "stressmark" effect, where four lines representing stylized bulging veins will appear on their forehead. Angry women will sometimes summon a mallet from nowhere and strike someone with it, leading to the concept of Hammerspace. Male characters will develop an inexplicable bloody nose around their female love interests (typically to indicate arousal). Embarrassed characters will invariably produce a massive sweat-drop, which has become something of a stereotype of anime.
More auteuristic schools of anime don't use such shorthands or find different but similar ways to express the same thing. FLCL (pronounced "Furi Kuri" and sometimes called "Fooly Cooly") is known for more wild exaggerated stylized emotions than in most mainstream works. In contrast an Isao Takahata film like Only Yesterday takes a much more realistic approach emphasizing realism over stylization.
Another unique aspect of anime not found in other commercial animation markets is the lack of a directoral system. In most animation produced around the world animators are all forced to conform to a set style by the director or animation director. In Japan starting with the animation director Yoshinori Kanada (as a means to save time and money) each animator brings his/her own style to the work. The most extreme examples of this can be found in Mindgame or The Hakkenden. The Hakkenden is particularly extreme showing constantly shifting styles of animation based upon the key animator that worked on that particular episode. This approach combined with Otsuka's "money shots" make key animators important individuals in the style and production of an anime film.
Many non-Japanese cartoons are starting to incorporate mainstream anime shortcuts and symbols to appeal to anime's tremendously growing fanbase and cut costs.
When he began drawing Ribbon no Kishi, the first manga specifically targeted at young girls, Tezuka further exaggerated the size of the characters' eyes. Indeed, through Ribbon no Kishi, Tezuka set a stylistic template that later shōjo artists tended to follow.
It is very common for one title to spawn several different releases. A title that starts as a popular television series might then have a movie produced at a later date. A good example is Tenchi Muyo!-originally an OVA, Tenchi Muyo! spawned three movies, three television series, and several spinoff titles and specials.