<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Anime is animated entertainment rendered in the style developed by Japanese studios, much of it derived from manga comic books. Anime has a well-developed culture all its own and boasts an enormous worldwide fan base. Many anime projects have genre-related subjects.

Anime are animated cartoons, made in the style originating in Japan. "Anime" is an abbreviation of the word "animation".

Contents 1 History 1.1 The Early years 1.2 1970's 1.3 The 1980's: "The Golden Age of Anime" 1.4 1990's: Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.5 2000's: The Post-Evangelion period 2 Terminology 3 Genres 3.1 Subgenres by Target Demographic 3.2 Subgenres by Thematic Content

History

The Early years

Early anime was heavily influenced by Disney cartoons of the 1950's, hence the tendency to draw characters with "big eyes", which is actually a shared trait of Disney cartoons of the time.

Production studios Toei Animation and Mushi Productions created several pioneering works. In 1963, Mushi Productions created one of the first long-running TV anime series, Mighty Atom (retitled in North America as "Astro Boy".

1970's

Madhouse Production and Sunrise Entertainment were founded during the 1970's. Several landmark new series were created, such as Mazinger Z (1972-74), Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972-74) (retitled in North America as "Battle of the Planets"), Space Battleship Yamato (1974-75) (retitled in North America as "Starblazers") and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-80).

The 1980's: "The Golden Age of Anime"

Spurred by the popularity of Star Wars in the late 1970's, space opera anime began to have crossover appeal in the growing North American market: An english dub of Gatchaman was released in North America in 1978 (retitled "Battle of the Planets") and an english dub of Space Battleship Yamato was released in North America in 1979 (retitled "Starblazers").

The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1983), The Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (1984), and Genesis Climber Mospeada (1983-84) were combined into one super-series by heavily re-editing and re-writing their English dub versions, to make one series that told of three "generations" all in the same continuity: the result was Robotech (1985) one of the first anime series to reach wide appeal in North America.

In 1984, The Transformers series began (retroactively termed "Transformers; Generation 1") and became an international sensation.

Hayao Miyazaki (co-founder of Studio Ghibli) ("the Walt Disney of anime") rose to prominence in the 1980's with such hit movies as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988) (released as a double feature with another Studio Ghibli feature, Grave of the Fireflies), and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989).

The post-apocalpytic Akira (1988) was one of the most expensive anime films made up to the time of its release. Often considered a seminal event, it became very popular upon North American release and is often credited with opening up legions of new fans in North America to anime. However, while a cult hit in America, Akira actually failed at the Japanese box office, and combined with the bursting of the economic bubble of the 1980's in Japan and the beginning of a long recession, the Golden Age of Anime came to an end.

1990's: Neon Genesis Evangelion

In 1995, director Hideaki Anno wrote and directed the 26 episode series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, produced by GAINAX studio. Often considered a watershed event, Evangelion reached unparalled popularity with Japanese audiences. Evangelion sought to revive the "giant robot" anime genre-style which had flourished in the early 1980's and which Anno felt current anime had strayed from. Evangelion was immensely popular, but also incredibly controversial, with disturbingly high levels of violence and psychological trauma. Anno suffered a psychological breakdown mid-way through the series' run, making the series' second season even darker and in many ways a critique of the introverted otaku (anime fan) culture. The series proved so controversial that eventually, even Japanese censors put pressure on to cut the series' funding, resulting in the final 2 episodes being mostly made up of clips of old episodes, and focusing on the characters' internal psychology without any resolution to the series' ongoing plotlines.

This sparked near-riots and a wave of vandalism and complaints against Anno. Once GAINAX was able to collect enough funding, Anno created an alternate-ending movie which replaced the final 2 episodes of the original run, and simultaneously addressed the unresolved plot as well as Anno's "revenge" on fans who had complained about the original ending: the now-infamous (and aptly named) The End of Evangelion (1997). Containing unparalleled levels of graphic violence, teenaged sexuality, and psychological violence combined with an apocalyptic, now-notorious "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" ending, Evangelion left an undeniable mark upon anime as a whole. So much so, that a common criticism is that most anime released after 1997 has essentially been copying Evangelion without doing anything new, leaving many (including GAINAX) to sarcastically refer to it as "the post-Eva period".

2000's: The Post-Evangelion period

Anime of the late 1990's and the 2000's has often garnered the criticism that after the commercial and critical success of Neon Genesis Evangelion, a large number of new series are simply "Evangelion clones" (such as Rahxephon). However, quite a few new series also won critical success in Japan and overseas.

The 1990's saw the rise of Pokémon (based on a popular video game), which ran in its original run from 1997-2002. This children's series became an international phenomenon, but in the early thousands declined in popularity, leaving many critics to label it a fad that came and went (several sequel series would continue the Pokémon saga through the present day, but have failed to recapture its initial popularity).

Dragon Ball (1986-1989), Dragon Ball Z (1989-1996), and Dragonball GT ([[1996-97), a series of children-oriented anime shows, also became international phenomenons and are arguably some of the most popular (in terms of ratings) anime series ever made.

The film Ghost in the Shell became an international success rivalling that of Akira, which also deeply influenced the science fiction genre (The Matrix series which began four years later contains several obvious parallels to it thematically and in cinematography). The story revolved around an elite counter-terrorism squad with cybernetic upgrades, Public Security Section 9, led by Major Motoko Kusanagi, in 2030's Japan. Ghost in the Shell depicts a future in which almost the entire population has access to cybernetic implants, and many have even become fully cyberized (brains in android bodies), and sentient AI and androids are being developed, blurring the line between Man and Machine. A sequel, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence followed in 2004. The TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (set in a separate continuity from the TV series) was released from 2002-2005, continuing the adventures of the Major and her CTU team as they battle other acts of cyber-terrorism. The second season was referred to as "2nd GIG". The movie "Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society" (2006) continued the story in place of a third season.

Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) also became incredibly popular in Japan and abroad and became a staple of the genre. And adult-themed anime, the series focused on the adventures of a motley crew of bounty hunters ("cowboys" in their future slang) aboard the space ship Bebop as they travelled across Earth's solar system.

Trigun (1995-1997) was another major anime series, focusing on the story of Vash the Stampede, an gunslinger living on a desert planet colonized by humans from Earth who had developed a frontier society paralleling the Wild West.

Hellsing (2002-2003) focuses on a secret paramility group run by the British government, the Hellsing Organization, charged with hunting down vampires and monsters, and their ultimate weapon against the vampires, Alucard, the ultimate vampire warrior who serves the Hellsing family. The series was popular but met with some mixed reviews for straying from the original manga it was adapted from, resulting in the Hellsing Ultimate OVA series beginning in 2006 (projected to contain 10 parts), which more faithfully adapted the series and which a higher production budget, and also much more graphic violence.

The period has also seen the rise of experimental, thought-provoking science fiction-based adult-themed series such as Serial Experiments Lain (1998), Boogiepop Phantom (2000), and Paranoia Agent (2004).

Fueling this rise in experimental anime seris was the advent of late night anime programming blocks in Japan. The idea being that many of these series are far too graphically violent, sexually explicit, or simply have too much of a niche audience because of their cerebral nature to ever become widespread ratings successes, anime production companies run heavily edited versions of these series at a loss on late-night TV, often on non-mainstream channels such as local or satellite TV. This broadcast is not made for ratings revenue, but entirely as an "advertisement" (almost like an infomercial) for the uncensored DVD release of these series. This is how many series containing levels of violence and nudity too extreme to ever be broadcast on mainstream networks have become hits with DVD sales, such as the series Elfen Lied ((2004), which became a cult hit in North America, going so far as to become North American distributor ADV Films's top-selling anime DVD release of 2005.

In the early 2000's, the Toonami after-school anime and Adult Swim late-night programming blocks ran anime on Cartoon Network, exposing the genre to a wider audience (though in recent years the amount of anime Cartoon Network aired declined, to the point that at the channel's 2007 upfront, it announced that it bought absolutely no new anime for the 2007 season). Adult Swim ran blocks of anime such as Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and even Neon Genesis Evangelion.

On June 11, 2007, Scifi Channel began airing a new "Ani-Mondays" late-night anime block from 11:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M. on Monday nights.

Terminology

The Japanese language does not pluralize words like English does. Hence the plural of "samurai" (one samurai) is also "samurai" ("there were two samurai", never "there were two samurais"; this would be a major faux-pas). Thus, the plural of "anime", is "anime", i.e. "a late night programming block full of anime" or "Why doesn't Scifi Channel run anime like Hellsing, Neon Genesis Evangelion, or Elfen Lied?"

Genres

Anime contains almost every genre concievable, including many non-science fiction series or "slice of life" series set in high school, at work, etc. Such genres include action, adventure, children's stories, comedy, drama, hentai (erotica), mecha (giant robot), medieval fantasy, occult/horror, romance, and science fiction. Some series can be quite complex, and thus be categorized in multiple genres, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, which could be categorized as drama, mecha, science fiction, post-apocalyptic, high school, psychological drama, with religious themes.

Several anime-specific terms for anime sub-genres are:

Subgenres by Target Demographic

• Josei - targeted at young women, aged 18 to 30
• Kodomo - targeted at young children Ex. Hello Kitty
• Seinen - targeted at 18-30 year old males. Ex. Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Wolf's Rain
• Shōjo - targeted at a young female audience of 13 to 18 year olds. Ex. Fruits Basket.
• Shōnen - targeted at a young male audience. Ex. Naruto, Bleach.

Subgenres by Thematic Content

• Bishōjo - blanket term meaning "pretty girl", used for anime series containing young and very cute girls below university age. Ex. Sailor Moon
• Bishōnen - blanket term meaning "pretty boy", used for animation style containing young (below university age) males whose attractiveness transcends gender boundaries (can have a homosexual slant, not unlike slash fanfiction, but also eastern societies such as Japan have a different aesthetic standard of beauty, though many characters drawn in bishōnen style can actually be strictly heterosexual).
• Harem anime - subgenre (often crossed with "magical girl" subgenre) in which a single male ends up with a large number of young beautiful women living in his home, all attracted to the central male character, leading to a comedy-of-errors as the good-natured male character desperately tries to actually not behave inappropriately, only to end up stumbling in on the girls changing clothes, etc. Ex. Ranma ½, Love Hina. (Elfen Lied is something of a dark satire of harem anime, as it makes a harshy dark presentation of how a harem-anime situation could realistically occur, i.e. the female characters are actually runaways fleeing child sexual abuse in their homes). There are "reverse harem" series with a central female character, i.e. Fruits Basket
• Hentai - pornographic anime
  • Ecchi - contains a great deal of sexual situations, usually in a satirical context i.e. containing a great deal of self-mocking fan service, but not outright pornography like Hentai. Ex. Love Hina
• Mahō shōjo - lit. "Magical girl", a subgenre of shojol also used to describe "Magical girl" characters present in series which are actually more of another genre. Ex. Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura
• Mahō shōnen - male equivalent of "Magical girl"
• Mecha - giant robot. Ex. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam, The Big O.
• Moe - anime series which features characters that are extremely cute and perky. Also refers to Moe-styled characters in series of another genre. Ex. Yomiko Readman in the series R.O.D.
• Sentai - fighting team. Ex. Power Rangers (adaptation of "Super Sentai" live action series for North American audiences).
• Yaoi - anime series containing love or sexual situations between two male characters in a homosexual relationship. Also a description of yaoi situations in non-yaoi anime.
• Yuri - anime series containing love or sexual situations between two female characters in a lesbian relationship. Also a description of yuri homosexual situation in non-yuri anime.

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