 |
|
| |
|
||||
Anime (アニメ) is Japanese animation, often characterized by stylized colorful images depicting vibrant characters in a variety of different settings and storylines, aimed at a variety of different audiences. Anime is influenced by the drawing style of manga, or Japanese comics.
TerminologyThe word anime appears in written form in three katakana characters a, ni, me (アニメ). Japanese pronunciation is /ɑnimɛ/, but in the United States and the United Kingdom, speakers typically pronounce the word as /ˈænɪˌmei/. The English word transliterates a Japanese term. The etymology is generally traced to an abbreviation of the Japanese transliteration of the English word "animation" (shortened, as many foreign words appear in Japanese). Some non-Japanese fans claim the word comes from the French animé ("animated") or "les dessins animés" (animated drawings.) Occasionally in English the word is seen written as animé, with an acute accent on the final e to let one know that it is pronounced, but this follows no standard transliteration scheme for Japanese. Internationally, 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 by many, a practice that probably stems 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." The voice actors for anime usually bear the Japanese equivalent designation, seiyū. History
Though filmmakers in Japan had been experimenting with animation beforehand, the first widely popular anime series was Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy in 1963. During the 1970s, anime developed further, seperating itself from its Western roots, and developing unique genres such as mecha. Notable shows in this period include Lupin III and Mazinger Z. In the 1980s, anime found itself accepted in the mainstream in Japan, and 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 2003, and Innocence: Ghost in the Shell was featured at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. CharacteristicsAnime features a wide variety of genres and unique artistic styles which varies from artist to artist. It can have as many genres as live action cinema, including adventure, science fiction, children's stories, romance, medieval fantasy, erotica (hentai), occult/horror, action. Most anime includes a variety of thematic elements. For example, it is not uncommon for strongly action-themed anime to involve humor, romance, and even poignant social commentary, and romance-themed anime may involve a strong action element. 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. 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", 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 big budget films, often from 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 using 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 OA series also forego shortcuts found in most other anime. The 2003 version of Astro Boy, despite being a Tezuka creation, was also very well animated as Sony claims to have spent three times as much per episode compared to other series. In short, anime tends to be dominated by a school of animation thought that emphasies 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. 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 Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon. 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. The ethical implications of producing, distributing, or watching fansubs is a topic of much controversy. See fansub for further discussion of those ethical issues. Because anime is so stylized, 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 exagerrated expression. Angry characters may exhibit a "vein" effect, where four lines vaguely in the shape of a pair of crossed 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. Embarassed characters will invariably produce a massive sweat-drop, which has become something of a stereotype of anime. The heavily stylized nature and mushrooming popularity of anime have led to the phenomenon of non-japanese cartoons using anime shortcuts and symbols. Notable names in animeThe following section is devoted to those artists who made an impact through direct contributions to anime as opposed to other artists who were in manga and other fields that had an impact on the development of Japanese animation. Production of anime
Manga artistsThe work of prominent manga (Japanese comics) artists often has an impact of anime, even when they are not themselves directly involved in anime.
Others who have influenced anime
Types of animeProduction typesMost anime can be categorized as one of three types:
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. Other types of releases include compilation movies, which are television episodes edited together and presented in theaters for various reasons, and are hence a concentrated form of a television serial. It may, however, be longer than the average movie. The reverse, an anticompilation movie, is simply an exploitation of the characters. These are of lower quality and of shorter length than a feature film. By target audienceShōjo anime is intended for girls. Most anime is assumed to be shōnen, intended for boys, so it is usually not necessary to label it. While seinen (intended for men) and josei (intended for women) anime does exist, anime that fall specifically and exclusively into those genres is rare. The only one of these terms in common use is shōjo.
GenresThe following are genres and designations that are specific to anime and manga. (For other possible genres, see list of movie genres.)
Several well-known Japanese animation studios
List of non-Japanese anime distributors
See also
References
External links
ar:انيمي ca:Anime de:Anime el:Anime es:Anime eo:Animeo fr:Anime ko:재패니메이션 it:Anime nl:Anime ja:アニメ no:Anime pl:Anime pt:Anime ru:Аниме |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 WordIQ.com - Privacy Policy
::
Terms of Use
:: Contact Us
:: About Us This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anime". |